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Orgeat Syrup (Sweet Almonds blanched ounces)
Sweet Almonds (blanched), 8 ounces.
Bitter Almonds (blanched) Powdered Gum Arabic, 338.
Orange Flower Water Water, 3 pints; Rock Candy Syrup, enough to make, 1 gallon. After the almonds have been blanched, beat them to a pulp in a mortar; add to this pulp the water, in small quantities at a time, stirring and with pressure; strain through cloth. Dissolve in this the gum arabic, and add orange flower water. Lastly, add enough full-weight rock candy syrup to make 1 gallon.
This is a soda-fountain formula for orgeat, the almond syrup still used in bar work, but it depends on bitter almonds in a quantity the printed text no longer gives.
- Bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted — exactly what this method does. Unheated, uncooked almond milk of this kind retains that cyanide in the strained liquid, and bitter almonds are not sold for food use in the United States for this reason.
- The dose is missingThe line reads "Bitter Almonds (blanched)" with no figure at all, and the gum arabic quantity has come through as "338" — a broken fraction or a page reference, not a usable weight. There is no way to reconstruct the intended proportions, and with a cyanogenic ingredient guessing is not an option.
- Volume is largeThe formula makes a full gallon of syrup, sized for a commercial fountain rather than a home kitchen. Any error in the bitter-almond fraction is multiplied across the whole batch.
- No cooking stepNothing here is boiled. The almond pulp is beaten, wetted, pressed and strained, then merely sweetened, so heat never has a chance to drive off volatiles.
- What the other ingredients areRock candy syrup is a heavy sugar syrup, near-saturated, used at the fountain as the sweetening base; "full-weight" appears to indicate the syrup at its standard full strength rather than thinned. Gum arabic is acacia gum, still sold as a beverage stabiliser, and orange flower water is orange blossom distillate — both remain unremarkable. It is only the bitter almond that puts this out of reach.
- If you want orgeatUse a current recipe. Modern orgeat is built on sweet almonds with a measured almond extract or a trace of apricot kernel flavouring standing in for the old bitter-almond note.
Orgeat takes its name through French from the word for barley — French orge, from Latin hordeum — because the original medieval and early modern versions were barley waters, sweetened and sometimes thickened with almonds. By the nineteenth century the barley had largely dropped out and the almond had taken over, and orgeat became a standard bottled syrup of the pharmacy and the soda fountain, poured over shaved ice or into seltzer alongside vanilla, sarsaparilla and raspberry. The bitter almond appears in formulas like this one because it supplies the sharp marzipan aroma that sweet almonds alone cannot; benzaldehyde, the compound responsible, was for a long time obtained from exactly this source. Its later disappearance from food use reflects the arrival of both synthetic benzaldehyde and regulation of cyanogenic ingredients.