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 Straws
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the peel
Boil the orange peel until tender enough to pierce with a fork.
Drain and let cool, then cut into strips about 3 inches long and ¼ inch wide.
Candy the strips
Boil the strips in a syrup made of sugar and water until they candy.
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.
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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
- Thick orange peel
- Provides the chewy, flavourful body of the straws once candied.
- Sugar
- Forms the syrup that candies the peel, adding sweetness and a glossy coating.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar to make the syrup that the peel cooks in.
The step that matters
Candy the strips until they are done. Boiling in the sugar syrup lets sugar slowly replace the water in the peel, so the strips turn translucent and firm. Stopping too early leaves them wet and sticky, while cooking too long can make them hard or cause the sugar to crystallise.
“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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