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 ↓
Candied Orange
Ingredients
Directions
Peel the oranges carefully to avoid spilling juice.
Divide the oranges into sections, discarding any with breaks in the skin.
Place the sections on a tray in a warm place for several hours to dry slightly.
If not using navel oranges, carefully remove the seeds without spilling juice.
Boil sugar until it reaches the crack stage.
Dip the orange quarters into the hot sugar.
Quickly remove them with a greased fork, draining excess syrup on the edge of the pan.
Lay the dipped oranges on greased trays.
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
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