Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Honey

A thick, honey-like syrup made from orange and lemon juice, sugar, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Orange Honey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Juice the oranges and lemon, and grate the rinds.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine the juice and grated rinds with sugar and boil together.

  2. Add the butter and eggs, stirring well.

  3. Simmer the mixture until it thickens to a honey-like consistency.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolks
Their proteins set with gentle heat, thickening the syrup and adding richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it concentrates, gives the syrup its body.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel that softens the syrup's sharpness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Orange rind
Grated zest carries aromatic oils that give the syrup its orange fragrance.

The step that matters

Simmering until thickened. Egg yolks thicken by coagulating, but if the heat is too high or stirring stops, they can scramble and turn grainy. Gentle heat and constant stirring keep the syrup smooth as it thickens.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, butter, egg):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, butter, egg. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes