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Dessert

Oranges Iced

A decorative dish of peeled, quartered oranges coated in powdered sugar icing and dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Christian, Mollie · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and orange 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 ↓

Oranges Iced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and quarter about eight sweet oranges.

  2. Make a soft icing by mixing two pounds of powdered sugar with the whites of ten eggs.

Ice and dry

  1. Dip each orange section thoroughly until covered with icing.

  2. Thread the coated sections and suspend them in the oven or sunshine to dry.

  3. Ensure the heat is not enough to brown them; if any section is not fully covered, re-dip it.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

189Calories
8 gProtein
6 gFat
28 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 3 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sweet Orange1 medium (131g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Christian, Mollie. 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. See the original page.

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. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Orange + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Sugar and orange 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

Powdered sugar
Forms the sweet icing coating that hardens as the sections dry.
Eggs
Whites bind the sugar into a soft icing that dries to a glossy shell.

The step that matters

Keep the drying heat gentle. Too much heat browns the icing before it dries, so the coating turns colored and sticky instead of pale and crisp. Sections missed by the icing need re-dipping so each piece is fully sealed.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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.

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