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Dessert

Orange Blossom Candy

A sweet candy made from sugar, water, egg white, and orange blossoms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange Blossom Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water until it reaches a soft ball stage.

  2. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

Flavour and shape

  1. Add the egg white and stir until well combined.

  2. Carefully add the orange blossoms when the syrup is more than three parts boiled.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto dry sheets of writing paper.

Cool and store

  1. Remove the candy before it is completely cold and place it on dishes to cool completely.

  2. Store in airtight tin boxes or canisters to keep fresh for over a year.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + orangetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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
Provides sweetness and, when boiled, the syrup that sets into the candy.
Egg white
Adds body and a light, airy texture to the mixture as it is stirred in.
Orange blossoms
Adds the floral orange aroma and flavour that defines the candy.

The step that matters

Boiling to the soft ball stage. The boiling time sets how much water is left in the syrup. Stopping too early leaves the candy soft and sticky, while boiling too long makes it hard and brittle as it cools.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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