Skip to main content
Dessert

Preserved or Candied Angelica

A preserved or candied angelica stem made by boiling, drying, and repeatedly syruping with sugar.

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

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 angelica

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

  2. Boil the stems in water for 20 minutes.

  3. Immerse the stems in cold water.

  4. Peel the stems.

  5. Dry the stems on a napkin.

  6. Place the prepared Angelica in an earthen bowl.

Make the syrup

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

  2. Pour the syrup over the hot Angelica.

  3. Cover the Angelica and let sit overnight.

  4. Draw off the syrup.

  5. Boil the syrup again while skimming.

  6. Pour the boiled syrup over the Angelica.

  7. Repeat steps 10‑12 four times.

Cook and dry

  1. Let the syrup boil.

  2. Add the Angelica to the boiling syrup.

  3. Cook until firm.

  4. Remove each piece.

  5. Place each piece 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 candied plant material that becomes tender and sweet as it is cooked.
Sugar
Sweetens the stems and, as the syrup concentrates, preserves them and gives them a firm, glossy texture.

The step that matters

Repeating the syrup soak and boil. Sugar must slowly replace the water inside the stems. Boiling the syrup again and repeating the soak concentrates it, so the stems become firm and preserved rather than soft or fermenting.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes