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ORGEAT, OR ALMOND MILK (a refreshing drink)
Take two ounces of Jordan almonds and four bitter ones. Blanch them, put them into a mortar with two ounces of powdered sugar, and pound them to a smooth paste, and whilst pounding them keep dropping half a tea-spoonful of cold water on them to prevent oiling. Put them into a basin, and pour gradually over them a pint of cold water, stir them for three or four minutes, cover them over, and leave them in a cool place for two hours. Strain the liquid through a napkin into a glass jug, and put it, if possible, in ice until wanted for use. Before serving, mix with the almond milk an equal proportion of cold water. Orgeat should be made the day it is used, as it will not keep sweet long. Probable cost, 3d. Sufficient for a pint of orgeat. (See also ALMOND SYRUP.)
This is a cold infusion, not a cooked drink, and the hazard sits in the four bitter almonds. Nothing in the method removes or destroys what they contain.
- Bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted — exactly what pounding in a mortar and steeping in water accomplishes. The recipe is, in effect, a cold extraction of the toxic fraction into the drink.
- No heat stepSome traditional almond preparations are boiled or baked, which drives off part of the volatile hydrogen cyanide. This one is never heated at all: paste, cold water, two hours in a cool place, strain, serve. The compound stays in the liquid.
- Quantity is not reassuringFour bitter almonds in a pint of orgeat, then diluted with an equal volume of water, is a small dose for an adult but the amount released varies widely between nuts, and children are far more susceptible. Victorian cookery books commonly specify bitter almonds by the individual nut rather than by weight.
- They are not sold for eatingBitter almonds cannot legally be sold unprocessed for food in the United States and are restricted in much of Europe. What a modern kitchen substitutes is almond extract or almond flavouring, which is a different product with a different safety profile — not a swap that makes this method as written sound.
- Jordan almondsIn this book the term means large sweet almonds of the Spanish Jordan type, the plain nut — not the sugar-shelled confection the name now describes in a sweetshop.
- If you want orgeatUse a current recipe built on sweet almonds and commercial flavouring. Do not scale down the bitter almonds here and assume the result is fine.
Orgeat takes its name from Latin hordeum, barley: the original French orgeat was a barley-water drink, and almonds were added, then eventually replaced the grain entirely, leaving a name that no longer describes its contents. By the nineteenth century orgeat meant a sweetened almond emulsion served cold in summer, and the bitter almond was the standard means of pushing the flavour past bland — the same reasoning that put it in ratafias, macaroons and blancmanges. Cassell's notes that orgeat "will not keep sweet long", the honest observation of a kitchen without refrigeration: an unpasteurised nut emulsion sours within a day. The syrup survives today mainly in bar work, where orgeat is the almond component of a Mai Tai.