Name: Sugared Orange
Ingredients: light-colored oranges; powdered white sugar

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 ↓

Sugared Orange

Ingredients

light-colored oranges
powdered white sugar

Directions

Prepare

Select the lightest colored oranges as they are more acidic.
Peel the rind and slice the oranges about ⅛ inch thick.

Sugar and serve

Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of powdered sugar over each slice.
Let the slices stand for 15 minutes before serving.

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.

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

Oranges: Provide the fruit and its natural acidity, which balances the added sweetness.
Powdered white sugar: Adds sweetness and dissolves quickly into the juice released from the sliced fruit.

“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.