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Dessert

Stuffed Oranges

A preserved orange stuffed with grated coconut, sweetened with sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and coconut work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Stuffed Oranges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Grate the outer rind of the oranges and soak them in salt water overnight.

  2. Soak the oranges in clear cold water to remove excess salt.

  3. Cut a small round piece from the top of each orange and remove the pulp and seeds with a spoon.

  4. Boil the rind and the small pieces in clear water until tender, boiling again if necessary to remove salt taste.

Stuff and cook

  1. Stuff the oranges with grated coconut and tie the small pieces back on.

  2. Make a syrup with 1 pound of sugar and 1 pound of fruit.

  3. Boil the oranges in this syrup.

Seal

  1. Seal the stuffed oranges in air-tight cans.

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 + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Sugar + coconuttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Small sour oranges
Provide the main fruit, whose rind and pulp form the base of the dish.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the oranges.
Grated coconut
Fills the oranges, adding moisture, sweetness and texture.

The step that matters

Boil the rind until tender with salt removed. Salt from the overnight soak must be fully washed out, since leftover salt makes the rind taste harsh. Boiling until tender softens the rind so it is pleasant to eat.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar. 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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