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Preserve

To Preserve Oranges

A method of preserving oranges by boiling them in syrup and storing them.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and orange 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 ↓

To Preserve Oranges

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the oranges in soft water until you can run a straw through the skin.

  2. For each pound of fruit, add 3/4 pound of sugar.

  3. Remove the oranges from the water and pour the hot syrup over them.

  4. Let them stand overnight.

  5. The next day, boil the oranges in the syrup until it thickens.

  6. Remove the oranges and strain the syrup over them.

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 + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and orange 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

Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved into syrup, preserves it by drawing out water.
Oranges
Provide the fruit that is softened and candied in the sugar syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling until the syrup thickens. Sugar must be concentrated enough to preserve the fruit. Stopping too early leaves a thin syrup that will not keep the oranges preserved well.

“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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