Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Preserve

A sweet preserve made from oranges and sugar, cooked with shredded peel, grated rind, and pulp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Orange Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Pare half of the oranges and cut the peel into shreds.

  2. Grate the yellow rind from the remaining oranges, discarding the white inner skin.

  3. Separate the oranges into quarters, remove seeds, and chop into small pieces.

  4. Drain off the juice without pressing the fruit and pour it over the sugar.

  5. If the oranges are not very juicy, add a little water for the syrup.

Cook the preserve

  1. Place the mixture over the fire and boil for 5 to 6 minutes, skimming off any foam.

  2. Add the shredded peel and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Then add the grated peel and chopped pulp, and boil for 20 minutes.

Jar

  1. Put the preserve into jars and seal when cold.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Orange + syruptop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,179 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Oranges
Provide the fruit pulp, juice and peel that form the body and bitter aroma of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it dissolves and concentrates, helps it set and keeps it stable.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam while boiling. Foam rising during the first boil carries impurities and air that can cloud the preserve and spoil its clean flavour, so it should be skimmed off as it forms.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup. 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.

More orange preserve recipes

Seville 3 See all 3 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes