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Dessert

Orange-peel Preserves

Preserves made from orange peel, sugar, water, and alum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Orange-peel Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peel

  1. Soak the orange peel in salt water for 24 hours.

  2. Rinse the peel in clear water.

  3. Boil the peel in weak alum water, then in clear water.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup with 1 pound of sugar and the same amount of peel, and boil until clear.

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

Orange peel
Forms the body of the preserve and becomes tender and translucent as it cooks in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the peel and, as a thick syrup, helps preserve it and keep it moist.
Alum
Firms the peel so it holds its shape and texture during long boiling.

The step that matters

Rinsing after the alum boil. Alum firms the peel but leaves a harsh, astringent taste if it is not washed off. Rinsing in clear water removes the residue before the peel goes into the sugar syrup.

“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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