Skip to main content
Dessert

Oranges Preserved Whole

This preserves whole oranges by soaking rinds, boiling, and coating with sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Oranges Preserved Whole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rinds

  1. Remove the pulp and juice from the oranges.

  2. Soak the rinds in weak salt water for 12 hours.

  3. Boil the rinds in clear water until tender, being careful not to break them.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine 1½ pounds of sugar with enough cold water to cover it in a kettle.

  2. Boil the sugar and water to form a thin syrup.

Preserve and finish

  1. Pour the boiling syrup over the fruit and let it sit for 12 hours.

  2. Boil the fruit again for about 30 minutes.

  3. Pour the syrup over the fruit again.

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

Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as a thick syrup, preserves the rinds by drawing out moisture.
Oranges
Provide the rinds that become the preserved fruit, with their bitter aroma and firm texture.

The step that matters

Boil the rinds until tender without breaking them. Rinds that are undercooked stay tough, while overboiling softens the peel so it tears. Gentle simmering keeps the rind intact so it can absorb the syrup evenly.

“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