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Dessert

Jujube in Candy

A confection made by coating jujube pastilles with a gum Arabic and sugar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Jujube in Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Dissolve the gum Arabic in the orange-flower water.

  2. Add the crystallized sugar to the mixture.

  3. Reduce the mixture in a bain-marie until it reaches a thick, jelly-like consistency without stirring.

Mold and dry

  1. Fill a square box with dry starch powder and make small holes for the pastilles.

  2. Fill the holes with the paste and place it in the stove to dry.

Finish

  1. Once dry, wipe off all the starch and coat the pastilles in candy.

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

Gum arabic
Forms the body of the pastilles, thickening into a jelly that sets as it dries.
Crystallized sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the paste its firm, candy-like texture.
Orange-flower water
Dissolves the gum and adds a floral aroma to the candy.

The step that matters

Let the pastilles dry fully before removing the starch. Gum Arabic sets as its water evaporates. If the pastilles are lifted out before they are dry, they can stick, lose their shape, or deform.

“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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