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Dessert

Orange Conserve

A sweet preserve made from oranges, currant juice, raisins, and sugar, simmered until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Orange Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Cut off and discard the ends of the oranges and remove the seeds.

  2. Cut the oranges, skin and all, into very small dice.

Cook

  1. Mix the currant juice, raisins, and oranges together in a pot.

  2. Boil gently for 1 hour.

  3. Add the sugar and boil slowly for an additional 30 minutes.

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. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. 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 bitter peel and pulp that add aroma and a sharp, complex flavour.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens and, as it dissolves and concentrates, helps the conserve thicken and keep.
Currant juice
Supplies the liquid base and its tartness, which balances the sugar.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the fruit mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar. Sugar added too early or in too little time can leave the conserve thin or cloudy. Boiling it slowly after adding helps it dissolve fully and concentrate, which lets the fruit set as it cools.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, sugar, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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