Orgeat

An almond syrup that began as a medieval French orge drink made from barley, switched to almonds in the eighteenth century, and ended up as the structural backbone of the Mai Tai and the Japanese Cocktail. Pronounced or-zhat.

What it is

Orgeat is a non-alcoholic almond syrup, traditionally made by blanching almonds, milling them with water and sugar to make almond milk, sweetening heavily, and finishing with orange flower water and a touch of citrus oil. The texture is silky, almost milky, and the flavor is rich almond with floral lift. Real orgeat made from almonds tastes nothing like the flat almond-extract artificial versions that dominated American bar shelves through most of the twentieth century.

The name comes from the Old French orge, meaning barley. Medieval orgeat was a barley drink, sweetened, sometimes with almonds added for body. By the eighteenth century French distillers had switched to using almonds entirely, and the barley was dropped from most recipes. The name stuck.

Where it shows up

The cocktail orgeat is most famous for is the Mai Tai, written by Trader Vic Bergeron in Oakland in 1944. Vic's original Mai Tai is aged Jamaican rum, lime, orange curaçao, orgeat, and a touch of rock candy syrup. The orgeat is half the structure. A Mai Tai with sour mix and grenadine, which is what most beach bars served in the 1970s and 80s, is a different drink with the same name.

Older than the Mai Tai is the Japanese Cocktail, printed by Jerry Thomas in 1862. Brandy, orgeat, Boker's bitters, lemon peel. The recipe predates the existence of the Japanese cocktail bar by more than a century. Thomas almost certainly named it for the visit of the first Japanese diplomatic mission to the United States in 1860, when he was working in New York.

Other places it shows up: the Army & Navy, gin and lemon and orgeat, dating to the early 1900s. The Fog Cutter, another Trader Vic build. Modern bartenders use orgeat as a sweetener whenever they want almond and floral notes without the alcohol of an amaretto or a Maraschino.

The historical arc

Almond syrup as a culinary product is medieval. Recipes for almond milk and almond syrup appear in cookbooks from the thirteenth century forward. The French sirop d'orgeat as a recognizable product dates from the 1700s, when it became a fashionable summer drink mixed with cold water. The classic French version was always almond plus orange flower water, sometimes with a small amount of bitter almond, which gave it the cherry-pit aromatic note that distinguishes a good orgeat from a flat one.

Orgeat reached the United States in the early 1800s and was firmly part of the bar pantry by Jerry Thomas's era. Through the late nineteenth century, real almond-based orgeat was widely available. Then two things happened. Prohibition shut down the cocktail trade. And after Repeal, the cheap industrial bottles labeled orgeat that came back to the US market were almond-extract syrups with no real almonds in them. Trader Vic in his memoir complains repeatedly about the difficulty of getting real orgeat, and at one point started making his own house version.

The honest revival started in the late 2000s, parallel to the broader cocktail comeback. Small Hand Foods, founded by Jennifer Colliau in San Francisco around 2008, was the first US producer to make and sell a real-almond, orange-flower-water orgeat at commercial scale. Liber & Co. in Texas followed in 2011 with their Texas Orgeat, which is pricier but extremely well made. Today there are at least a dozen craft orgeats in production, and the industrial almond-extract versions are mostly relegated to dessert syrups.

The bitter-almond question

Traditional French orgeat used a small amount of bitter almond, the seed of Prunus dulcis var. amara, which contains naturally occurring amygdalin that breaks down into hydrogen cyanide and benzaldehyde when wet. The benzaldehyde is what gives bitter almond its powerful aromatic and what gave classical orgeat its signature cherry-pit lift. The hydrogen cyanide is the reason raw bitter almonds are toxic and the reason most US orgeat producers use a benzaldehyde-equivalent sweet almond plus a touch of apricot kernel or a regulated amount of bitter almond extract instead.

Small Hand Foods uses California sweet almonds with a small amount of apricot kernel. Liber & Co. uses California almonds plus orange flower water without bitter almond. Both produce excellent orgeat. The pure bitter-almond profile that Trader Vic and Jerry Thomas were used to is harder to find now because the FDA regulates the amount of bitter almond in food products. The flavor difference is small but measurable.

Modern brands

• Small Hand Foods Orgeat (San Francisco). The standard. Real almonds, orange flower water, a touch of brandy as preservative, made in small batches. Refrigerate after opening.
• Liber & Co. Real Orgeat (Texas). Cleaner profile, slightly less floral, very rich almond. Excellent in a Mai Tai.
• Orgeat Works (Latitude 29). Made by Jeff "Beachbum" Berry's New Orleans tiki bar. Aimed at Trader Vic-spec drinks.
• BG Reynolds Orgeat. The tiki specialist's house orgeat, sold direct.
• Monin Almond Syrup. Industrial. Almond-extract based. Avoid for cocktails. Fine for coffee.

Modern substitutions

Real orgeat is hard to substitute because the structure of the Mai Tai depends on the almond's body. A homemade orgeat is genuinely worth the effort and not difficult: blanch almonds, blend with water, strain, mix with equal parts sugar by weight, finish with a teaspoon of orange flower water per cup. It keeps two weeks in the fridge.

For a one-drink emergency, almond milk plus simple syrup plus a few drops of orange flower water and a few drops of almond extract approximates the flavor. It will not have the same texture. Amaretto adds almond flavor but also alcohol and sweetness, which throws off the balance unless you adjust everything else.

Where to buy

Small Hand Foods ships nationwide from their website and is also sold by Cocktail Kingdom and at specialty grocers in California, New York, Chicago. Liber & Co. has wide retail distribution and ships from their site. Orgeat Works ships from Latitude 29's online shop. A bottle of any of them runs fifteen to twenty dollars.

At a glance

Category	Non-alcoholic almond syrup
Origin	France, eighteenth century (medieval barley antecedent)
ABV	0% (some have a brandy preservative around 2 to 4%)
Key brands	Small Hand Foods, Liber & Co., Orgeat Works
Signature drinks	Mai Tai (1944), Japanese Cocktail (1862)
Pronunciation	or-zhat

Cocktails to try

• Mai Tai · aged Jamaican rum, lime, orange curaçao, orgeat. Trader Vic, 1944.
• Japanese Cocktail · brandy, orgeat, Boker's bitters, lemon peel. Jerry Thomas, 1862.
• Army & Navy · gin, lemon, orgeat. Early 1900s.

The Mai Tai with real orgeat is one of the best cocktails ever written. The Mai Tai with sour mix is the reason most Americans think they hate Mai Tais.