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Dessert

Orange Drops

A candied orange drop made by zesting oranges, adding lemon juice, powdered sugar, and cooking until thick, then dropping onto paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Orange Drops

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Zest the oranges finely and squeeze their juice into a small pan along with the rind.

  2. Squeeze the lemons into the pan without zesting them.

  3. Sift in powdered sugar and mix until you achieve a fine thickness.

  4. Heat the mixture in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon for 5 minutes.

Shape and store

  1. Remove from heat and drop spoonfuls onto white paper, shaping them as round as possible, about the size of a silver two‑pence.

  2. Allow them to cool completely before removing from the paper and storing in a box.

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.

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.

  1. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

China oranges
Provide the juice and aromatic rind that flavour the drops.
Lemons
Add sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and, once cooked and cooled, body that sets the drops.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture. Stirring over medium heat for the full time cooks the sugar and juice into a thick mass; too little cooking leaves the drops soft and sticky, while the cooled mixture firms as it sets.

“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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