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Dessert

Orange Drops

Orange Drops are a sweet candy made from orange zest, lemon juice, and powdered 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

Prepare the juice

  1. Finely grate the zest of the oranges and squeeze the juice into a small pan, including the rind.

  2. Squeeze the lemons into the pan without grating the rind.

Cook and shape

  1. Sift in powdered sugar and mix until the mixture is a fine thickness.

  2. Place the pan over low heat and stir with a wooden spoon for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and drop spoonfuls onto white paper, shaping them as round as possible.

  4. Allow to cool until set, then carefully remove and store 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 zest that give the drops their main flavor.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the sweetness of the sugar.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the mixture and, as it cooks, helps it thicken and set.

The step that matters

Stirring over low heat for 5 minutes. Gentle heat lets the sugar and juice thicken evenly without scorching. Too much heat can burn the sugar or make the drops hard and sticky once cooled.

“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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