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Dessert

Orange-Flower Sugar Candy

A candied sugar confection flavored with orange flowers and spirit of roses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and rose work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 876 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange-Flower Sugar Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar until it reaches a soft ball stage.

  2. Add the orange flowers.

  3. Boil for a dozen times.

  4. Strain through a fine sieve to remove the flowers.

  5. Return the sugar to the pan and bring it back to the soft ball stage.

  6. Skim off any impurities and remove from heat.

  7. Stir in the spirit of roses.

Set the candy

  1. Pour the mixture into a basin.

  2. Cover the basin.

  3. Place the basin in a warm area for 8 days, maintaining an even temperature.

  4. Drain off the syrup; the candy will remain in the basin.

  5. Heat the basin to release the candy.

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 + rosetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together876 recipes

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

  2. Orange + spirittop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

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

  3. Spirit + rosetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together140 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

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

Sugar and orange 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
Forms the structure of the candy as the syrup cools and crystallizes.
Orange flowers
Adds a fragrant orange aroma to the syrup.
Spirit of roses
Adds a floral aroma to the finished candy.

The step that matters

Return the sugar to the pan and bring it back to the soft ball stage.. The sugar concentration reached at this stage determines how the candy sets. Too little boiling leaves it soft and sticky, while too much makes it hard and brittle. Straining out the flowers first also changes the syrup's composition, so the cook must reach the stage again afterward.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raspberryfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, spirit, rose. 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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