Orgeat Syrup
Blanch one half pound of sweet almonds, and twelve bitter almonds. Pound to a paste, adding one half cup of orange flower water gradually to prevent them from oiling. Dilute with four cups of water and add one half cup of sugar. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Strain and bottle. This syrup does not keep well, and must be used quickly.
This is the classic almond syrup for lemonades and soda-fountain drinks, but it is built on an ingredient that is no longer sold as food in the United States and cannot be dosed safely in a home kitchen.
- The bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which the almond's own enzymes convert to hydrogen cyanide as soon as the kernel is crushed and wetted — exactly what pounding to a paste with orange flower water does. Twelve raw kernels is not a trace flavouring; the batch as a whole carries enough cyanide to matter, even though it is divided among many servings of unheated syrup.
- No cooking step to drive it offCommercial orgeat and almond extracts are processed to strip the cyanide out. This syrup is never heated at all — the sugar is simply stirred until dissolved — so nothing in the method reduces what the almonds release.
- Kernel strength is unknowableAmygdalin content varies widely between varieties and crops, so "twelve bitter almonds" gives no usable measure of potency. There is no way to scale or check it by eye or taste at home.
- Not legally sold as foodRaw bitter almonds have not been available on the general US market for decades. Anything a supplier now labels "bitter almond" for eating may be apricot or peach kernel, which carries the same hazard, or a processed extract, which is a different product entirely.
- The keeping warning is real tooHalf a cup of sugar to four cups of water is far below the sugar concentration that preserves a syrup, which is why the original says it will not keep. Even without the bitter almonds this is a two- or three-day refrigerator item at best.
- If you want orgeatUse a current recipe built on sweet almonds and a bottled bitter-almond or orgeat flavouring, and follow its sugar ratio and storage directions.
Orgeat takes its name from orge, French for barley: the medieval and early modern drink was a barley water, and almonds were added later until they displaced the grain altogether while the name stayed put. By the nineteenth century orgeat meant an almond syrup, sweet-shop and pharmacy stock, poured over ice with water or soda and later into cocktails, where it survives chiefly in the mai tai. Bitter almonds were commonly used in period almond-syrup recipes to push the flavour forward, the same marzipan-and-amaretto note now supplied by processed extract.