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Dessert

Pralines of Orange Flowers

A confection of candied orange blossoms coated in sugar.

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 ↓

Pralines of Orange Flowers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the blossoms

  1. Soak the orange blossoms in cold spring water for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the blossoms on a clean napkin, then cover the drained blossoms with another napkin.

Make the pralines

  1. Boil the sugar with enough water to reach the half crack stage, then add the orange blossoms to the sugar.

  2. Stir with a silver fork to coat them thoroughly, then turn the coated blossoms out onto a sieve.

  3. Pick out the petals.

  4. Return the grained sugar to the boiler with just enough water to dissolve it, then boil the sugar again to the half crack stage.

  5. Add the half-candied petals, coat them with sugar again, then turn them out onto the sieve.

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

Orange blossoms
Provide the fragrant flavour that defines the pralines.
Loaf sugar
Forms the crystalline coating that sets around the blossoms as it cools.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar to the half crack stage. Sugar must reach the correct concentration to coat the blossoms and set firmly. Too little cooking leaves a sticky coating, while too much makes it hard and brittle.

“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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