Skip to main content
Dessert

Preserved Oranges

Preserved oranges are oranges boiled in soft water, then coated in sugar syrup and left to stand overnight.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and orange 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 ↓

Preserved Oranges

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and soak

  1. Boil the oranges in soft water until you can run a straw through the skin.

  2. In a separate pot, combine the sugar with the oranges.

  3. Pour the hot syrup over the oranges.

  4. Let them stand overnight.

Thicken and finish

  1. Boil the oranges in the syrup until it thickens.

  2. Remove the oranges.

  3. Strain the syrup over them.

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 + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and orange 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
Boiling softens the peel and pith so the fruit becomes tender and can absorb syrup.
Sugar
Dissolves into a concentrated syrup that preserves the fruit and adds sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil the oranges in the syrup until it thickens. As water evaporates, the sugar concentration rises and the syrup thickens. Stopping too early leaves it thin and less preserving, while boiling too long can overconcentrate it and make it sticky or hard as it cools.

“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 preserved oranges recipes

in Jelly 18 See all 30 →

You might also like

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