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Orange Flower Water
"Take of Orange Flowers, forty-eight troy ounces; water, sixteen pints. Mix them and distil eight pints. "-U. S. Dispensatory.
This is a pharmacist's formula, lifted from the U. S. Dispensatory, for the flavouring water used in cakes, custards and cordials. It is a straightforward steam distillation, but the quantities are apothecary quantities and want translating.
- Troy ouncesApothecary weight: one troy ounce is about 31 g, so 48 troy ounces of blossom is roughly 1.5 kg, or 3 lb 5 oz. That is a very large quantity of flowers — a fraction of the batch, kept in proportion, is more realistic.
- The liquid measuresSixteen US pints is 2 gallons, about 7.6 litres; you distil off 8 pints, about 3.8 litres. In other words you collect half the water you started with and discard the spent flowers and residue.
- Which orangeThe blossom intended is that of the bitter or Seville orange, Citrus aurantium, the same flower that yields neroli oil. Sweet orange blossom will distil, but gives a thinner, less characteristic scent.
- The stillAny steam or water distillation rig will do — a copper alembic, a glass laboratory setup, or a stovetop pot still. Keep the heat gentle and never let the flowers scorch on the bottom; burnt blossom carries straight into the distillate and cannot be removed.
- StrengthA half-volume distillate off that weight of flowers is likely to be stronger than many bottled orange flower waters sold today, though commercial strengths vary a good deal. Taste before you commit it to a batter, and start with less than a modern recipe calls for.
- Unsprayed flowersDistillation concentrates volatile residues along with the aromatics. Use blossom you know has not been sprayed, which in practice means your own tree or a grower you can ask.
- Keeping itThere is no preservative here and no sterile filtration. Bottle full to the neck, cap tightly, keep it cold and dark, and do not expect the shelf life a commercial bottle claims. Cloudiness or a musty smell means throw it out.
- Why it sits under "The Lemon"The orange formula turns up in a lemon chapter, the citrus flavouring waters apparently being grouped together. Nothing lemon goes into it.
The attribution is real and worth noticing: the United States Dispensatory, first published in 1833 by George B. Wood and Franklin Bache, was the standard American reference for drug preparations through the nineteenth century, and cookbook compilers borrowed from it freely when they wanted a formula stated in exact weights. That orange flower water appears in a pharmacopoeia at all reflects its double life — a carrier and flavouring for medicines as much as a confectioner's ingredient. Distilled bitter-orange blossom reached European kitchens through the Arab world, where it remains essential to pastries, syrups and coffee, and by the eighteenth century it was the standard floral note in French and English baking, later largely displaced by vanilla. The concentrated oil from the same flower is called neroli, a name traditionally traced to Anne Marie de La Trémoille, princess of Nerola, who is said to have popularised the scent in the late 1600s.