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Dessert

Orange Straws, Extra Fine

Candied orange peel strips made by boiling, draining, and crystallizing in sugar.

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 ↓

Orange Straws, Extra Fine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peels

  1. Cut orange peels into long narrow strips.

  2. Soak the strips in cold water with a little coarse sea salt.

  3. Bring to a boil, then drain the water. Add fresh water and bring to a boil again, then drain.

Candy and dry

  1. Cook the peels in a mixture of 10 lbs. sugar and 1 gallon water over low heat until tender.

  2. Drain off the syrup and spread the peels on a wire screen to dry.

  3. Once dry, crystallize the peels in sugar.

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

Orange peels
Provide the main flavor and the chewy, candied texture once cooked in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the peels and, as a syrup, replaces the water in the peel, giving them their candied body.

The step that matters

Cooking the peels until tender. Blanching in several changes of water softens the bitter pith and reduces bitterness before the sugar cook. Cooking over low heat lets the peels soften and absorb syrup evenly without the sugar darkening or scorching.

“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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