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Dessert

Orange Straws

A candied orange peel confection made by boiling strips, cooking in syrup, and rolling in sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Orange Straws

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut orange skins into strips.

  2. Boil the strips, changing the water 3 times, until tender and no longer bitter.

Make the candy

  1. Make a syrup with equal parts sugar and water.

  2. Cook the peel in the syrup for 10 minutes.

  3. Lift the peel out with a fork or skimmer and place on a plate.

Coat and set

  1. When cool, roll the peel in granulated sugar.

  2. Place on a buttered plate.

  3. Roll again in sugar the next day.

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 + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Orange + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 skins
Provide the candy's main body, citrus aroma, and a chewy texture once cooked.
Sugar
Sweetens the peel and, as the syrup thickens, helps it turn firm and glossy.
Water
Dissolves the sugar into syrup and carries away bitter compounds during boiling.
Granulated sugar
Forms a dry sweet coating that keeps the pieces from sticking together.

The step that matters

Boiling the strips until no longer bitter. The bitter compounds in the white pith leach out slowly into the water. Changing the water and boiling until the strips are tender removes most of this bitterness, so the candy tastes sweet and citrusy rather than harsh.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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