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 ↓
Of Odoriferous Sugars
Ingredients
Directions
Make the orange sugar
Lightly grate the peel of the oranges on a piece of sugar, avoiding the white skin underneath.
Scrape the colored sugar off with a knife.
Repeat the grating and scraping.
Let the sugar dry on a stove or in the oven.
Bruise the dried sugar.
Pass the bruised sugar through a silk sieve.
Make the vanilla sugar
Cut a large clove of vanilla in half.
Cut the halves into small strips.
Chip the strips.
Add a spoonful of pounded sugar to the vanilla.
Pound the mixture together.
Sift the mixture through a silk sieve.
Repeat the sieving with any remaining vanilla.
Make the mocha sugar
Put a cup of strong coffee in a small pan.
Add enough sugar to thicken the coffee.
Heat on moderate fire, stirring continuously until it boils.
Remove the pan from heat.
Add two spoonfuls of pounded sugar.
Stir with a silver spoon, rubbing the sugar against the pan's sides.
Let the mixture cool until it becomes dull and thick.
Dry the cooled mixture on the stove.
Pass the dried mixture through a silk sieve.
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 + lemontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,634 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Orange + vanillatop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,371 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together35,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Vanilla + coffeetop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,391 recipes
Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
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Orange + coffeetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together326 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).
Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
- Sugar
- Carries the flavor and forms the base of each flavored sugar.
- Fine sweet malta oranges
- Peel oils supply the bright citrus aroma in the sugar.
- Vanilla
- Supplies the aroma of the sugar.
- Mocha coffee
- Supplies coffee flavor and, once cooked with sugar, thickens into a dry flavored sugar.
The step that matters
Avoiding the white skin when grating the orange peel. The white pith beneath the peel is bitter, so grating only the colored outer layer keeps the citrus flavor clean and free of bitterness.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, sugar, vanilla, coffee):
- Figfits better
- Peachfits better
- Bananafits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, vanilla, coffee. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“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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