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 ↓
Orange Straws
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the peel
Scrub the oranges with a clean brush.
Cut the peel into straws using scissors.
Place the straws in cold water and bring to a boil.
Drain the water and repeat the boiling process two more times.
On the third boil, let it cook for two minutes.
Drain and weigh the straws.
Make the syrup and candy
Make a syrup using slightly more sugar than the weight of the peel.
Boil the syrup until it spins a thread.
Add the straws to the syrup and boil until they are clear.
Lift the straws out with a perforated spoon and place them on a platter of granulated sugar.
Roll the straws in sugar, cool, and store in jars.
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
What each ingredient does
- Oranges
- Provide the peel, which is cut into straws and candied.
- Granulated sugar
- Sweetens the peel and, boiled into syrup, cooks the straws until they turn clear.
The step that matters
Boiling the peel in several changes of water. Repeated boiling in fresh water draws out the bitter compounds in the peel. Skipping or shortening these boils leaves the candied straws noticeably bitter.
“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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