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Dessert

Candied Orange or Lemon Peel

Candied orange or lemon peel is made by simmering peels in sugar syrup, then drying them.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Candied Orange or Lemon Peel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peels

  1. Soak the orange or lemon peels.

  2. Boil the peels until tender, similar to making preserves.

Make the first syrup

  1. In a pot, combine 1 quart of water with 1 pound of sugar to make a thin syrup.

  2. Simmer the peels in the syrup for 30 minutes.

  3. Pour the simmered peels into a bowl and let stand overnight.

Make the second syrup

  1. The next day, prepare a second syrup with 1 pound of sugar and 1 pint of water, boiling until it falls from the spoon in threads.

  2. Add the peels to the second syrup and boil for another 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the peels and drain them on a sieve.

  4. Transfer the candy to a dish to dry in a warm place.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the syrup that penetrates the peel, sweetening it and preserving it as candy.
Water
Dissolves the sugar into syrup that the peels can absorb.

The step that matters

Second syrup and boiling to threads. The second syrup must reach the thread stage so enough sugar concentrates to set the candy. Too little boiling leaves the peels sticky and soft, while overcooking can make them hard.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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