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Dessert

Candied Oranges

Candied oranges are orange quarters soaked in a sugar syrup until the syrup dries and crystallizes.

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 ↓

Candied Oranges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Peel and quarter the oranges.

  2. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water to make a syrup.

  3. Boil the syrup until it reaches the candying point.

Coat and dry

  1. Dip the orange quarters into the syrup.

  2. Place the dipped oranges on a sieve to drain.

  3. Set the sieve over a large flat dish to catch dripping syrup.

  4. Let the oranges sit in a warm place until the syrup is dry and crystallized.

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

Sugar
Forms the syrup that coats the orange and crystallizes into a sweet, dry shell as it dries.
Oranges
Provide the fruit base that is sweetened and preserved by the syrup coating.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled into a syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to the candying point. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration. If it is too thin, the coating stays sticky and does not dry; if it is overcooked, it becomes brittle or hard. Boiling to the target stage gives a coating that dries into crystals.

“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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