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Orange Peel Syrup

A syrup made by boiling orange peel in water and sweetening with sugar.

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 ↓

Orange Peel Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the peel from the oranges.

  2. Combine the orange peel and cold water in a pot.

Reduce and sweeten

  1. Boil the mixture until it reduces to 1 quart.

  2. Add the loaf sugar and boil together until dissolved.

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

Orange peel
Supplies the citrus aroma and flavor that the water draws out during boiling.
Cold water
Extracts flavor from the peel, and reducing it concentrates that flavor into the syrup.
Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and body, thickening the liquid as it dissolves.

The step that matters

Reducing to 1 quart. The final volume sets the syrup's concentration. Stopping too early leaves it thin and weakly flavored, while over-reducing makes it too thick and intense before the sugar 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.

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