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Dessert

Sliced Oranges

Slices of Seville oranges preserved in a sugar syrup.

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 ↓

Sliced Oranges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the slices

  1. Choose Seville oranges with thick rinds and slice them thinly.

  2. Soak the slices in a large basin of spring water for two days.

  3. Boil the soaked slices in the same water until tender.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup with the juice of the oranges and some of the boiling water, using 1 pound of sugar for every pound of liquid and orange peel.

  2. Boil the mixture again, adding one-third of the sugar until the slices look clear.

  3. Let the slices sit in the thin syrup for two days.

  4. Strain off the syrup and boil it with the remaining syrup, skimming well.

  5. Add the orange slices and boil for 15 minutes.

  6. Remove the slices and put them for use.

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

Seville oranges
Thick rinds and bitter pulp give the slices their characteristic tart, aromatic flavour and firm texture.
Fine loaf sugar
Sweetens the slices and, as it is boiled into syrup, preserves them and gives them their glossy clarity.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar in stages. Adding sugar gradually while boiling lets the syrup concentrate slowly, so the slices clear and absorb sweetness without toughening or breaking. Boiling in one large addition risks cloudy, tough peel and uneven preservation.

“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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