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Orgeat of Montpellier
Take one pound of barley, wash it and soak it in water, and separate the grains well. Tie it up in a piece of muslin, put it in a pot with a quart of water, and set it on the fire to boil gently for four hours. Then put into the water one pound of sweet almonds, blanched and skinned; boil for a few minutes; then take out the barley and almonds; pound them together in a mortar; mix well with the water, strain all together through a piece of linen, pound again the residue, pour the water over, stir, and repeat the straining. This water should now look very thick. Add one pound of pounded sugar, and boil to a syrup. Try the syrup by dropping some on a plate; if it remains like paste it is done. Take it off the fire, and flavour with orange-flower or other flavouring. Bottle and keep for use. To make the drink, put two table-spoonfuls into a decanter, pour fresh water over, shake to mix well, and it is ready to drink immediately. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
An almond-barley syrup of the old French pattern, thicker and less sweet than commercial orgeat. The instructions are sound but assume a mortar and a slow fire; a blender and a careful eye on the pan replace both.
- The four-hour barleyA quart of water simmered four hours will reduce to almost nothing over modern heat. Use the lowest setting with a lid, and top up with boiling water to keep roughly a quart in the pot, or the almonds will have no liquid to steep in.
- Why the muslin bagTying the barley keeps the grains from clouding and thickening the water and makes them easy to lift out whole. Cheesecloth or a jelly bag does the same; leave slack so the barley can swell.
- AlmondsOne pound of blanched sweet almonds is about 3 cups. Buy them already blanched or drop whole almonds into boiling water for a minute and slip the skins off. Use only sweet almonds -- older orgeat recipes often added a few bitter almonds for scent, and those are not safe to use.
- PoundingThe mortar work is the point of the recipe: the almonds must be broken to a paste so the milk is rich rather than watery. A food processor does it in a minute, but add a little of the barley water to stop the nuts turning to butter.
- Straining twiceDo not skip the second pressing. A good deal of the almond substance stays behind in the residue, and the recipe's instruction to pound it again with the water poured over is what makes the liquid "very thick." Squeeze the linen hard; a nut-milk bag works well.
- The syrup testBoil until a drop "remains like paste" on a cold plate, as the recipe directs; the book gives no temperature, so go by the plate test rather than a thermometer. Stir often, as almond solids scorch quickly at the bottom of the pan.
- FlavouringOrange-flower water is the traditional choice and is still sold in Middle Eastern and baking shops. Add it off the heat, a teaspoon at a time -- it is strong and volatile, and boiling drives it off.
- Yield and keepingHow much syrup you finish with depends on how far it is boiled down, so measure rather than assume. Because the sugar is low for the volume and the syrup carries nut solids, it will not keep at room temperature as the original implies; refrigerate in a clean bottle and use within about two weeks, or freeze it.
Orgeat takes its name through French orge from the Latin hordeum, barley, and the barley is the older half of the drink: medieval and early modern orgeat was a barley water, with almonds joining and eventually dominating it. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the syrup was a staple of French confectioners, and a version associated with Montpellier, in the Languedoc, was scented with orange-flower water; quite why the city's name attached to it is not clear. Cassell's places the recipe among its beverages as a household equivalent of a bought cordial, to be diluted by the glass from a bottle in the larder, at a stated cost of one shilling and sixpence. The same syrup survives today largely as a cocktail ingredient, most familiar in the mai tai, though the commercial article is generally sweeter and rarely contains barley at all.