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Dessert

Orange Preserves

A preserve made by boiling oranges with sugar and water until the mixture thickens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Grate the oranges slightly and score them with a knife, but do not cut deep.

  2. Soak the oranges in cold water for three days, changing the water two to three times daily.

  3. Tie the oranges in a cloth and boil them until a pin can easily penetrate the skin.

Make the syrup

  1. While boiling, combine the sugar and water in a pot and bring to a boil for 1-2 minutes, then strain through muslin.

Cook and test

  1. Add the boiled oranges to the syrup and cook until it jellies and turns yellow.

  2. Turn the oranges in the syrup to ensure even cooking.

  3. Test the syrup by cooling a small amount; it should not be too stiff.

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. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Provide the main fruit, with peel and pulp that set into the preserve.
White sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it set into a thick jelly as it cooks.
Water
Dissolves the sugar into a syrup and softens the oranges during cooking.

The step that matters

Testing the syrup. Sugar syrup thickens as water evaporates and stiffens further on cooling. Testing a cooled sample shows whether it has reached a soft set, so the preserve does not turn too stiff.

“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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