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Orgeat Cream
Two ounces orgeat syrup, 4 ounces sweet cream, dash ice cream, maraschino cherry. This makes a 7-ounce drink.
A fountain drink, not a cooked dish: three measured pours and a garnish. The only real decisions are what kind of cream and how cold you get it.
- The measures are fluid ounces2 oz orgeat is 1/4 cup, 4 oz cream is 1/2 cup. The syrup and cream come to 6 ounces, so the stated 7-ounce total implies the ice cream makes up the difference.
- "Sweet cream" means unsouredIn fountain usage it distinguishes fresh cream from sour cream or buttermilk, not from unsweetened cream. Light cream or half-and-half gives the balance intended; heavy cream at half a cup makes the glass cloying.
- A dash of ice creamA small spoonful, and the recipe's 7-ounce total implies roughly an ounce of plain vanilla, added to thicken and chill rather than to make a milkshake.
- OrgeatAn almond syrup, usually scented with orange flower water. Homemade versions vary enormously in sweetness, so taste before committing to the full 2 ounces.
- How it was actually mixedMixing -- the syrup and cream need to be combined thoroughly; otherwise the dense syrup sits at the bottom of the glass.
- The cherryMaraschino cherries were originally preserved in maraschino liqueur, though bright red dyed cherries had largely displaced them in American use. A brandied or Luxardo-style cherry is closer to the older article.
- YieldOne glass. Scaling up works, but mix each drink separately or the ice cream melts into the batch.
Orgeat takes its name from the French orge, barley: the earliest versions were barley emulsions, and almonds displaced the grain over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries while the old name stuck. By the time American soda fountains were at their height, orgeat was simply a bottled almond syrup on the dispenser's shelf, sitting alongside vanilla, lemon and sarsaparilla, and it was used the same way any of them were: two ounces into a glass, then cream, soda or ice cream depending on what the customer asked for. Cream drinks of this kind were the fountain's answer to the bar, and they became more prominent still in the years when the bar itself was closed. Orgeat later faded from the soda counter but survived in mixed drinks, which is why most people now meet it in a tiki bar rather than a drugstore.