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Dessert

Candied Oranges

Candied oranges are orange quarters soaked in a sugar syrup.

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 ↓

Candied Oranges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and quarter the oranges.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water to make a syrup.

  2. Boil the syrup until it hardens.

Coat and set

  1. Remove from heat and dip the orange quarters in the syrup.

  2. Let them drain on a fine sieve over a platter to catch the syrup.

  3. Allow to cool until the sugar crystallizes.

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 fruit that is coated and candied, supplying the flavor and texture of the finished piece.
Sugar
Dissolves into the syrup and recrystallizes on cooling, forming the sweet, crisp coating.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until it hardens. Sugar concentration determines how the coating sets. Boiling too little leaves the coating sticky, while boiling too long can make it brittle or bitter as the sugar caramelizes.

“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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