Orange Blossom Water (Ma’ al-Zahr)

The liquid in the bottle is as clear as water and the scent fills a room. Ma’ al-zahr, orange blossom water, is distilled from the flowers of the bitter orange. Half the sweets and half the sherbets in Syrian cooking carry that scent. A few drops change a whole tray.

Which flower, which month

The raw material is the blossom of the bitter orange — naranj — and in some places lemon blossom goes in with it. The calendar is sharp: picking starts in early March and finishes at the end of April. Rose water season is May. Orange blossom water therefore comes out a month before rose water every year, and the two seasons never overlap.

How the still is set up

The flowers go into a copper pot and water is poured over them. An alembic is set on the mouth of the pot; in the Syrian countryside it is called a karake or an anbiq. The trick is at the joint: to stop steam escaping, a cloth called a shashiya is wrapped where pot and alembic meet, and dough is pasted over it. The fire is low and the work is long. The distillate runs down a thin pipe into a glass vessel.

What it is used for

It is the whole of white coffee: boiling water with a few drops in it. It goes into muhallabiyeh, into namoura, into kaak and into sherbets, and a few drops finish an almond drink. What you smell at a sweet shop counter is often not the sugar but this water in the syrup.

How it differs from rose water

The Damascene rose, Rosa damascena, is picked in May and rose water comes from it; orange blossom water comes from a citrus flower in March and April. They are two seasons of one distilling tradition — same still, different raw material. The scents are not interchangeable either: rose water is sweet and round, orange blossom sharp and cool.

Where to find it

Bottled at spice merchants and herbalists. It keeps a year in a kitchen. In season the stills go up in courtyards in the countryside and the distilling runs for a few weeks; in those weeks you see baskets of blossom in village squares.