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Dessert

To Preserve Oranges

Preserving oranges by boiling and covering them in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

To Preserve Oranges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Grate or peel the oranges, removing only the thin outer rind.

  2. Make a small incision where the stalk was.

  3. Squeeze out as much juice as possible, preserving it with the pulp in a basin.

  4. Soak the oranges in cold water for 3 days, changing the water twice.

  5. Boil the oranges in fresh water until very tender.

  6. Drain the oranges.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup with the specified sugar and water to cover the oranges.

  2. Let the oranges sit in the syrup for 2 to 3 days before draining well.

Finish the preserve

  1. Weigh the juice and pulp.

  2. Add double their weight in sugar.

  3. Boil until the scum ceases to rise.

  4. Remove any scum that forms.

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

Oranges
Provide the main body of the preserve, with rind, pulp and juice all used.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the preserve and draws water out of the fruit, helping it keep.

The step that matters

Skim the scum until it stops rising. Scum is impurities that rise to the surface as the sugar boils. Removing it keeps the preserve clear and helps it keep well in storage.

“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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