Why it works: Orange and syrup are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,179 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Orange Candy
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the oranges
Blanch the oranges and dip them in clean water.
Cut the oranges into slices, neither too thick nor too thin.
Place the slices into lukewarm syrup as you cut them.
Cook in syrup over three days
Heat the syrup on the fire for three consecutive days.
Strain the syrup from the slices.
Boil the syrup for a few minutes each time.
On the fourth day, boil the syrup until it reaches a blow stage.
Add the orange slices to the syrup, cover, and bring to a boil once.
Dry and candy
Remove the slices and place them on a grating to dry.
Once the surface is dry, candy them as you would with other candies.
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.
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Orange + syruptop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,179 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Malta oranges
- Provide the fruit slices that become candied as they absorb the sugar syrup.
- Syrup
- Sugar syrup that penetrates the orange slices, sweetening them and preserving them as they candy.
The step that matters
Boiling the syrup to a blow stage on the fourth day. Syrup must reach the correct concentration to set into a candy coating once the slices dry. Undercooked syrup stays runny and leaves the slices sticky, while overcooked syrup turns 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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