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Orange-Flower Tablets

A sweet tablet made from sugar and orange flowers, flavored with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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-Flower Tablets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clarify and boil the sugar until it reaches the large feather stage.

  2. Cut the orange flowers into small pieces and wet them with lemon juice to keep them white.

Make the mixture

  1. Add the orange flowers to the boiling sugar and boil again to the same stage.

  2. Remove the pan from the heat and let the mixture rest for a few minutes.

  3. Use a spatula to work the mixture around the edges of the pan until it has a bright, icy appearance. Stir the center with the spatula.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture into a paper-lined case.

  2. Mark the mixture with a knife to indicate the size of the tablets.

  3. Once cooled, break into pieces along the marked lines.

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

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Double refined sugar
Forms the crystalline body of the tablets and sets them firm as it cools.
Orange flowers
Supply the characteristic orange aroma and flavour of the tablets.

The step that matters

Working the mixture until bright and icy. Stirring the edges and centre as the sugar cools encourages fine crystals to form, giving an opaque, bright texture. Pouring too early or stirring too little can leave the tablets soft or glassy rather than set and matte.

“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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