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Syrup Op Orgeat

A sweet almond and orange‑flower water syrup made by blending blanched almonds with sugar and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Syrup Op Orgeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the almonds by steeping them in boiling water for a few minutes, then remove the skins with your fingers.

  2. Beat the blanched almonds with 5 lbs of sugar in a mortar until it forms a paste.

Make the almond liquid

  1. Add distilled water and triturate.

  2. Strain the mixture through muslin.

  3. Repeat the previous steps until you have 5 pints of liquid.

Finish the syrup

  1. Dissolve the remaining 5 lbs of sugar in the liquid and boil gently.

  2. Add the orange-flower water when the mixture is cold.

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.

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.

  1. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bitter almonds
Provide the characteristic bitter almond aroma and flavour of the syrup.
Sweet almonds
Supply the bulk of the almond body and mild flavour to the syrup.
Cane sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, once dissolved, gives it body and helps preserve it.
Orange-flower water
Adds a floral, fragrant aroma to the finished syrup.

The step that matters

Add the orange-flower water when the mixture is cold. Orange-flower water is volatile, and its delicate aroma is driven off by heat, so adding it after boiling and cooling keeps the fragrance noticeable.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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