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Seville Orange Paste

A sweet paste made from boiled Seville orange rinds and sugar, shaped and dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,833 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Seville Orange Paste

Oven, in the book's wordsA very gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rinds

  1. Wipe and pare the Seville orange rinds into thin strips.

  2. Boil the strips in plenty of water until extremely tender.

  3. Drain the rinds in a large sieve and press out excess water.

Make the paste

  1. While still warm, pound the rinds into a smooth paste.

  2. Mix in as much fine sifted sugar as possible.

Shape and dry

  1. Roll the mixture out very thin and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Dry the shapes in a gentle oven at 300°F (150°C).

  3. Store in airtight boxes once cooled.

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 + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Seville orange rinds
Provide the bitter aromatic flavour and the body of the paste.
Fine sifted sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps it set firm and preserve when dried.

The step that matters

Boiling the rinds until extremely tender. Rinds that are not fully softened stay tough and fibrous, so the paste will not pound smooth or roll out thin. Thorough cooking breaks down the pectin and cell structure of the peel.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar. 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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