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Orgeat
(Orzata) Sweet almonds with 10 or 12 bitter ones, seven ounces.
Water, one and half pounds.
Granulated sugar, two pounds.
Skin the almonds and grind them very fine, or better pound them in a mortar, moistening from time to time with orange flower water, of which you will use about two tablespoonfuls.
When the almonds have been reduced to a paste, dissolve the latter in one third of the water and filter the juice through a cheese cloth, squeezing hard . Put the paste, back in the grinder or in the mortar, grind or pound again, then filter again with another third of the water. Repeat the same operation for a third time, then put on the fire the liquid so obtained and just before boiling put the sugar, mix, stir and boil for about twenty minutes. Let it cool, then bottle and keep in a cool place. The orgeat does not ferment and the thick liquid may be diluted in water, half an inch for a whole tumbler of iced water.
The syrup itself is a straightforward almond milk cooked with sugar, but the flavouring agent at its heart is a poison, and it is the reason this page should be read rather than followed.
- The bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which the almond's own enzyme converts to hydrogen cyanide as soon as the kernel is crushed and moistened — exactly what this recipe instructs. Ten or twelve pounded bitter almonds put cyanide into a syrup that is then bottled and drunk cold, diluted, over days or weeks, and the dose in any one glass is small but unknown.
- The cooking does not make it safeTwenty minutes at a boil drives off some hydrogen cyanide, but the amount lost depends on how open the pan is and how much has already formed, and none of it is measurable in a home kitchen.
- They are also not soldRaw bitter almonds cannot legally be sold for food in the United States and are restricted in a number of other countries. Bitter almond extract or oil sold today is generally required to have the hydrocyanic acid removed, which is not what the original text means.
- Reading the quantitiesThe measurements are weight-based: seven ounces of almonds, two pounds of sugar, and water given by weight rather than volume — a pound and a half of water is roughly 680 g, just under three cups. That is about one and a third times as much sugar as water by weight.
- "Half an inch for a whole tumbler"The dilution is given as depth in the glass, not volume — pour the syrup to about half an inch in a tumbler and top with iced water. That works out to something in the region of one part syrup to eight or ten parts water.
- If you want orgeatUse a current recipe. Modern versions build the same flavour from sweet almonds with orange flower water and a regulated almond extract, and they specify the strength of the flavouring.
Orzata takes its name from orzo, barley: the medieval and early modern drink was a barley decoction, and the French orgeat and English "orgeat" carry the same root through Latin hordeum. Almonds crept in alongside the grain and eventually replaced it altogether, so that by the nineteenth century an orzata was an almond syrup with no barley in it at all, sold by pharmacists and caff"e alike and kept on hand for hot weather. The bitter almonds here are doing the job that almond extract does now — a few kernels of Prunus dulcis var. amara supply the intense marzipan note that sweet almonds lack — and their casual inclusion, unmeasured beyond "10 or 12," is typical of a period when the same kernels were also stocked for ratafias, macaroons and blancmange. Orange flower water is used here as the grinding liquid rather than a finishing perfume.