Steenbergs organic Orange Blossom Water

Orange flower water should be a storecupboard item in every kitchen and used to lift pastries and puddings from mediocrity into a blissful and sensual foodie heaven.  Steenbergs Organic Orange Flower Water is a wonderful floral ingredient often used in Middle Eastern cooking in both savoury and sweet foods (such as baklava), but sadly has fallen from use in British cuisine except in the making of marzipan. In Mexico, orange flower water is used for the creation of little wedding cakes. In western cooking, orange flower water is probably best known for flavouring madeleines and I often use it for flavouring marzipan at Christmas.  Try using Steenbergs Organic Orange Blossom Water in home made ice-creams, adding it to custards, cream and yoghurt or over fruit.

Important notice: Steenbergs organic orange blossom water is manufactured and sold as a food product and any potential liability for its use in any other way is not accepted.

Orange blossom comes from bitter orange trees, Citrus x aurantium. Bitter orange covers a range of fruits such as Seville orange (this used to be called the Bigarade) and bergamot orange. Bitter orange is the source of the flavours used for Steenbergs organic orange extract and the blossom is used for Steenbergs organic orange blossom water. Bitter orange is also used as the rootstock for the sweet orange. Bitter orange trees are an evergreen flowering tree that grows to around 10m in height (30-35ft). Orange leaves are arranged alternately and have an oval shape, being darker green on the upper side of its leaves than underneath, growing to 5-10cm in length ( 2-4 inches). Citrus trees are almost entirely infertile and are propagated through grafting, with the sweet orange often using bitter orange as the rootstock. They are grown outside in groves and must be grown in warmer temperatures of 16-29C (60-85F). The orange fruit is really a modified berry, with numerous seeds, is fleshy and soft with around 10 segments (or carpels) inside, and derives from a single ovary. The orange fruit is covered in a bright orange rind created from the thickening of the ovary wall. The orange seed is the "pip" and the white material within the peel is called the "pith". The pigmented outer skin is full of oil glands that contain much of the heady notes of citrus and when flexing a piece of orange peel it will release oil from the glands, sometimes as a spray from the limonene oils. Orange blossom is softly floral and a beautiful white with a yellow centre for the stamens; the flavour of the orange blossoms comes from a mixture of terpenes as also found in lavender and roses with some extra flavour from methyl anthranilate that flavours concord grapes. To make orange flower water, it is a 1:1 of orange flowers and water, steam distilled until it yields roughly 20% of the combined starting weight.  For more on bitter orange trees, try Wikipedia.

Orange blossom water is pretty strong stuff that can have an overpowering fragrance that puts some off, but used with discretion it is just perfection in a little bottle.  Use it sparingly to flavour creme caramel or creme brulee, egg custards, fruit salads, pana cotta, rice puddings or over your strawberries and cream, replacing the vanilla extract in these recipes for orange blossom water.  And if you feel daring sprinkle it over chicken that is being roasted towards the end of the cooking time, or even a Middle Eastern lamb.  Or a Middle Eastern style cake or baklava.