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 Orange Peel
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the peel
Remove the peel from the oranges in quarters.
Place the peel in a saucepan. Cover with cold water.
Bring to a boil.
Cook slowly until soft, checking with a skewer.
Drain the peel.
Carefully scrape off the white portion with a silver spoon.
Cut the yellow portion into thin strips lengthwise using scissors.
Make the syrup and candy
In a separate pot, boil 4 cups of water with 2 cups of sugar until the syrup threads from a spoon.
Cook the orange strips in the syrup for 5 minutes.
Drain the orange strips.
Coat the strips with fine granulated sugar.
Arrange the strips in a bonbon dish.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Supply the peel, which becomes the candied strips and gives the flavour.
- Granulated sugar
- Sweetens the syrup and coats the strips, forming a crisp sugary surface.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar into syrup and softens the peel during cooking.
The step that matters
Cook the peel until soft before candying. Peel is tough and bitter until its pectin-rich pith softens with long, gentle simmering. Boiling hard can break the strips and make them tough, so cooking slowly lets the peel become tender enough to absorb the syrup evenly.
“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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