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Dessert

Oranges, Coloured, for Dessert

A dessert of peeled oranges rolled in colored sugar and garnished with myrtle sprigs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and myrtle work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Oranges, Coloured, for Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the colored sugar

  1. Crush the sugar to a fine powder.

  2. Add a few drops of prepared cochineal and mix with your fingers until evenly colored.

  3. Place the colored sugar on the fender to dry completely.

Finish and serve

  1. Peel the oranges, removing all the thick white skin and thready parts without piercing the fruit.

  2. Roll the oranges in the colored sugar and arrange them neatly on a dish.

  3. Garnish with sprigs of myrtle.

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 + myrtletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + myrtletop 38% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together32 recipes

Sugar and orange 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
Forms a fine coating that gives the oranges sweetness and a crisp, dry surface.
Oranges
Provide the fresh, juicy fruit that is the main body of the dessert.
Cochineal
Supplies the color that tints the sugar coating.

The step that matters

Peeling the oranges without piercing the fruit. The thick white pith is bitter, so it must be removed fully. Piercing the fruit lets juice escape and can leave the sugar coating wet and uneven.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, myrtle):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Apricotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, myrtle. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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