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Drink

Milk Op Almonds

A drink made by crushing almonds, adding water and sugar, then filtering and perfuming with orange flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Milk Op Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bruise the sweet almonds in a mortar.

  2. Gradually add water, using 1 pint for 20-30 almonds.

  3. Add a lump of sugar to prevent oil separation, rubbing constantly.

  4. Pass the mixture through a flannel.

  5. Perfume with orange flower water.

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

Sweet almonds
Provide the fat and protein that form the emulsified, milky body of the drink.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and helps keep the almond oil from separating out.
Water
Extracts the almond solids and suspends them to make a liquid milk.

The step that matters

Add a lump of sugar while rubbing constantly. Almonds release oil when crushed, and the oil can separate and float instead of staying emulsified. Constant rubbing breaks the solids down finely and keeps the oil dispersed in the water, while the sugar helps stabilise the mixture so it stays smooth.

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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