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 ↓
Orange Paste
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Extract the juice from Seville oranges by pressing them.
Boil the rinds until tender enough to crush with your fingers.
Scoop out the pulp and pound the rinds with half the juice in a mortar until very fine.
Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.
Make the paste
Keep it on the fire until it forms a marmalade.
Weigh the mixture; for every pound of pulp, use two pounds of loaf sugar.
Clarify the sugar and boil it until it reaches a feather stage.
Mix the sugar with the marmalade and finish it like currant paste.
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 + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Seville oranges
- Provide the bitter juice, pulp and rinds that give the paste its characteristic tart flavour and set.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the paste and, as it thickens, helps it set firm and preserves it.
The step that matters
Boiling the sugar to the feather stage. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set properly. Too little boiling leaves the paste soft and runny, while overcooking makes it hard and grainy as it cools.
“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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