(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.
PRESERVES
214
APRICOT MARMALADE
(Conserva di albicocche)
Use good and ripe apricots. It is a mistake to believe that jam or marmalade can be obtained with any kind of fruit. Take off the stones, put them on the fire without water and while they boil, stir with a ladle to reduce them to pulp. When they have boiled for about half an hour, rub them through a sieve to separate the pulp of the fruit from the skins that are to be thrown away, then put them back on the fire with granulated sugar in the proportion of eight tenths, that is to say eight pounds of sugar for ten pounds of apricot pulp. Stir often with the ladle until the mixture acquires the firmness of marmalade, which will be known by putting from time to time a teaspoonful in a plate and seeing that it flows slowly.
When ready, remove from the fire, let it cool, and then put in vases well covered and with a film of paraffine or tissue paper dipped in alcohol, so that the air may not pass in.