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Syrup of Orgeat
Blanch a pound of sweet and two ounces of bitter almonds; rub them in a mortar to a smooth paste, adding now and then half a table-spoonful of cold water to prevent them from oiling. Mix the paste gradually with three pints of cold water; strain it through a cotton bag, squeezing the bag well to get out all the goodness of the almonds. Mix with this emulsion a quarter of a pint of orange-flower water. Now make a gallon of clarified syrup, pass it through a jelly-bag, set it on the fire, and boil it up. When approaching to a proper consistency, stir in the emulsion gradually so as to check the boiling a little. Let it now continue to boil until it is done enough. Put it to cool. Bottle the syrup while still warm, agitating it before you pour it into the bottles. Let it stand till quite cold before you cork it. To make it keep better, pour a little drop of olive oil on the top of each bottle, which must be quite full, allowing not more than half an inch of space between the cork and the liquid. When a bottle is opened, the oil is to be removed with a bit of cotton. For another way, see ORGEAT SYRUP.
This is a nineteenth-century almond drink syrup, and it hinges on an ingredient that is no longer sold as food in most countries. The notes below explain the specific problem and the archaic quantities.
- The bitter almondsBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which the almond's own enzyme emulsin converts to hydrogen cyanide as soon as the kernel is crushed and wetted — exactly what happens in the mortar and the three pints of cold water here. Two ounces is several dozen kernels, well inside the range that has caused fatal and near-fatal poisonings, particularly in children, and the syrup is intended to be kept and drawn on over weeks. Raw bitter almonds cannot legally be sold for eating in the United States and are restricted elsewhere; use a current recipe for almond syrup or orgeat instead.
- Cyanide is not boiled away reliablyThe emulsion is added to boiling syrup, which drives off some hydrogen cyanide, but the recipe gives no time, no temperature and no way to know how much remains. Nothing in the method makes the finished bottles safe by any measurable standard.
- The oil sealThe film of olive oil floated on top of each full bottle was the period's answer to spoilage — it excludes air from the surface. It is not a preservation method by modern standards, and a sugar syrup bottled warm and corked at room temperature can still ferment or mould beneath the seal.
- Archaic measures, for readingA gill is a quarter-pint, so the quarter-pint of orange-flower water is a little under two-thirds of a US cup; note that an imperial pint is 20 fl oz, not 16, so the three pints of water are nearer 7 US cups than 6. "Clarified syrup" meant sugar and water boiled with beaten egg white and skimmed, then strained through a jelly-bag.
- "Done enough"The original assumes a cook who judges syrup density by eye and thread — there is no thermometer reading given, and none can be inferred, since the water in the almond emulsion shifts the final concentration.
- What orgeat is forA spoonful or two of the syrup was let down with iced water to make a summer drink, or used to flavour creams, ices and puddings. A gallon of syrup is a household-scale, season-long batch, not a single dessert.
Orgeat comes through French from Provençal orjat, from Latin hordeum, barley — the drink began as a barley water and only later became almond-based, keeping the older name. Medieval and early modern almond milks did the same double duty, serving as a Lenten substitute for dairy and as a cooling drink for the sick, and the almond emulsion strained through a cloth bag is essentially that technique written down again. The bitter almonds are here for flavour rather than bulk: they carry benzaldehyde, the compound responsible for what we now call almond extract, and confectioners of the period are said to have sometimes used a small proportion of bitter kernels, peach or apricot kernels, or laurel leaves to strengthen a mild sweet-almond paste. That practice was already contentious by the time Cassell's was compiled, and the twentieth century replaced it with synthetic benzaldehyde — a shift driven by cost, supply and consistency as much as by the cyanide the natural source carries with it. The oil-sealed, brim-full bottle is a good marker of the era: a store cupboard with no refrigeration, where syrups, ketchups and fruit vinegars were all put up in bulk and defended against air by whatever came to hand.