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 Orange Peel
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the peel
Weigh the oranges and use that weight as the amount of sugar.
Cut the orange rind into strips and boil them in water for 20 minutes, changing the water three times with boiling water.
Make the syrup and candy
Extract the juice from the oranges and combine it with the sugar to make a syrup; do not add water.
Drain the strips and cook them in the syrup for about 5 minutes.
Remove the strips while still hot and roll them in granulated sugar.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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
- Sugar
- Dissolves into the juice to form a syrup that sweetens and preserves the peel.
- Orange rind
- Provides the bitter, aromatic peel that becomes the candy once cooked in syrup.
- Orange juice
- Supplies the liquid base for the syrup, adding citrus flavour and acidity.
The step that matters
Boiling the strips in changing water. Repeated boiling in fresh water draws out bitterness from the pith and rind. Skipping or shortening these changes leaves the candied peel 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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