Skip to main content
Dessert

Candied Grapefruit

Candied grapefruit peel is made by simmering grapefruit peel in sugar syrup until tender, then rolling in sugar and drying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Grapefruit and sugar work together. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Candied Grapefruit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peel

  1. Remove the peel from the grapefruit in quarter sections and cut into strips ½ inch wide.

  2. Weigh the peel and use an equal weight of sugar.

  3. Cover the peel with cold water and let it stand overnight.

  4. In the morning, simmer the peel in the water until very tender, about 5 to 6 hours, cooking very slowly.

  5. Drain off the liquid.

Make the syrup and candy

  1. If needed, add water to make the weight half that of the sugar.

  2. Cook the sugar and water to a syrup.

  3. Add the peel and simmer very slowly until the syrup thickens and the peel becomes clear.

  4. Pick out the pieces of peel.

Dry and store

  1. Roll them in granulated sugar.

  2. Set on waxed paper to dry.

  3. Store the candied grapefruit in tin containers.

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. Grapefruit + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together309 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Grapefruit peel
Provides the candied body that becomes tender and clear as it simmers in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the peel and, as syrup, replaces water in the peel to preserve it.

The step that matters

Simmering the peel until very tender. Peel left underdone stays tough and bitter, while overcooking can break it down. Slow simmering softens the pectin-rich membrane gradually so the strips become tender without falling apart before the syrup is added.

“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.

More candied grapefruit recipes

Peel 5 See all 2 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes