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Preserved or Candied Angelica

A preserved or candied angelica made by boiling stems, then repeatedly coating them in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Angelica and sugar work together. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 487 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Preserved or Candied Angelica

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stems

  1. Cut the angelica into 12‑inch long stems.

  2. Boil the stems in water for 20 minutes, then immerse them in cold water.

  3. Peel and dry the stems on a napkin.

  4. Place the prepared angelica in an earthen bowl.

Make the syrup and candy

  1. Make a syrup by combining 5 pounds of sugar with 5 pounds of water.

  2. Pour the hot syrup over the angelica and cover.

  3. The next day, draw off the syrup, boil it again while skimming, and pour it over the angelica.

  4. Repeat this process four times.

  5. On the fifth time, let the syrup boil, add the angelica, and cook until firm.

  6. Remove each piece and place it in a warm area to dry.

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. Angelica + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together487 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Angelica stems
Provide the main plant material that becomes candied and firm as sugar replaces its water.
Sugar
Forms a concentrated syrup that preserves the stems and gives them sweetness and a glossy coat.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to make the syrup and carries it into the stems during repeated soaking.

The step that matters

Repeated syrup soaking and the final boil. Sugar must gradually replace the water in the stems; soaking and reboiling in increasingly concentrated syrup over several days prevents collapse and leaves the pieces firm and preserved rather than soft.

“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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