Name: Orgeat Syrup
Ingredients: 1 lb sweet almonds; 1 oz bitter almonds; juice of ½ lemon; 2 pints barley-water; 1½ lb sugar; 1 dram orange flower water; 1 dram rectified spirit

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orgeat Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Blanch the sweet and bitter almonds, then mince and pound them in a mortar to a smooth paste, moistening with lemon juice.
Add 1 pint of barley-water and rub through a sieve or wring through a tammy.
Pour a little strained liquid back onto the sediment, mix well, and add another pint of barley-water, then wring this through the tammy.
Combine this with the first lot of liquid, adding 1½ lb sugar and 1 dram each of orange flower water and rectified spirit.
Bottle and cork closely.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Almond + barleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together78 recipes

Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).
Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,125 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,655 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Orange + spirittop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together171 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, barley, sugar, orange, spirit):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Cherryfits about as well
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, barley, sugar, orange, spirit. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.