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Dessert

China Orange Preserves

Preserves made by boiling oranges 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 ↓

China Orange Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Pour boiling salt brine over the oranges and let them sit overnight.

  2. Drain the brine, then rinse the oranges with fresh water and wipe them.

  3. Carefully open the stem end with a small silver knife.

  4. Remove the seeds without breaking the fruit.

Cook in syrup

  1. Combine 4 parts sugar with 1 part water and bring to a boil.

  2. Drop the oranges into the boiling syrup.

  3. Boil hard for 30 to 60 minutes.

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 fruit and peel that become the preserve, holding their shape during long boiling.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved in water, forms a syrup that preserves it.
Water
Dissolves the sugar into a syrup that the oranges can absorb and cook in.

The step that matters

Keeping the oranges whole while removing seeds. Cutting the stem end and removing seeds must be done gently, because breaking the fruit lets pulp escape and the peel can split during boiling, spoiling the preserve's shape and texture.

“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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