What is orange blossom water used for in Moroccan cooking?

In spring, around the orange groves outside cities like Marrakech and the Souss valley, the bitter-orange trees blossom and the air turns heady with their scent. That scent, captured by distillation, is orange blossom water — ma zhar — and it is one of the most evocative flavours in the Moroccan pantry. The first time I smelled the freshly distilled version, straight from a copper still, it was so concentrated it was almost dizzying. The bottled kitchen version is gentler, but still a little goes a very long way.

Its most beloved home is the pastry table. It perfumes the syrup that soaks chebakia — the sesame-coated, rose-shaped honey pastries eaten through Ramadan — and scents ghriba biscuits, cornes de gazelle, and the orange-flower-laced milk that sometimes accompanies them. Spoon syrup over a hot pastry and the orange blossom rises with the steam; that smell, for many Moroccans, IS the smell of celebration and of Ramadan evenings. It is also stirred into rice puddings and milky almond drinks.

But it is not only for sweets. A few drops brighten an orange-and-cinnamon salad, the classic dessert of sliced oranges dusted with cinnamon and sometimes a little sugar. It can be added, sparingly, to the water for couscous or to certain sweet-savoury tagines. And on special occasions, host families sprinkle it from a silver flask over guests' hands and faces as a fragrant welcome — a gesture of hospitality I have received many times and never tire of.

A word of caution from experience: it is potent, and easy to overdo. Add a few drops, taste, and add more only if needed — too much and the dish tastes of soap or perfume rather than flowers. Buy a proper distilled food-grade orange blossom water (not a synthetic flavouring), keep it tightly capped, and a single small bottle will scent a year of pastries and salads. It is, to me, the bottled essence of a Moroccan spring.