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Orange Drops

Orange Drops are candied orange pieces made by simmering orange and lemon juice with sugar.

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. Juice the oranges and lemons into a small pan, including the rind of the oranges.

  2. Sift in powdered sugar until the mixture reaches a fine thickness.

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

Shape and store

  1. Remove from heat and drop spoonfuls onto white paper using the tip of a knife, shaping them as round as possible.

  2. Allow 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

Oranges
Provide the main flavour and the aromatic oil in the rind that gives the sweets their character.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the sweetness of the orange.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the mixture and thickens it as it cooks down into a candy-like mass.

The step that matters

Heating over low heat while stirring. Sugar cooks and thickens as water evaporates, and too much heat can scorch the mixture or cause it to turn bitter and set unevenly. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the sugar from burning on the pan base.

“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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