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Dessert

Candied Orange and Lemon Peel

A preserved citrus peel sweetened in syrup, used as a confection.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Candied Orange and Lemon Peel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peels

  1. Soak the peels in a mixture of salt and water for 9 days to 3 weeks, ensuring all pulp is removed while keeping the white part intact.

  2. Wash the peels.

  3. Boil the peels in cold water until tender, changing the water until it no longer tastes salty.

  4. Lemon peels may take 3 to 4 hours to boil; ensure they are perfectly tender to avoid hardening in syrup.

  5. Drain the peels.

Make the syrup and candy

  1. Make a weak syrup with 1 pint of water and 1 pound of sugar; boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the peels to the syrup.

  3. Boil gently until clear and the syrup thickens.

  4. Prepare a second syrup with ½ pint of water and 2 pounds of sugar.

  5. Boil until clear and a short hair forms from the fork.

  6. Add the drained peels to the second syrup.

  7. Remove from heat.

  8. Stir until the syrup appears whitish.

Finish and serve

  1. Lift each piece out.

  2. Lay it on a dish sprinkled with granulated sugar.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Orange peels
Form the candied pieces and carry the flavour once sugar replaces their water.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the peel and, as syrup concentration rises, preserves it and makes it firm and glossy.

The step that matters

Boiling the peels until fully tender before candying. Peels must be fully softened before they go into the sugar syrup, because sugar hardens the peel and tender peel cannot become tough later. Undercooked peel stays leathery and tough in the finished candy.

“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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