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Candied Orange and Lemon Peel

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Candied Orange and Lemon Peel

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the oranges and lemons in half lengthwise and squeeze out the juice.

  2. Make a brine with enough water and coarse sea salt so that an egg will float.

  3. Submerge the peel in the brine and let it sit for at least 10 days.

  4. Strain the peel and boil it in water until tender.

  5. Place the peel in cold water and remove the pulp.

  6. Pack the peel loosely in a vessel for syruping.

  7. Boil enough loaf sugar with water to create a syrup that reaches the feather stage.

  8. Let the syrup cool and pour it over the peel.

  9. After a day or two, drain off the syrup, add more sugar, and warm it up.

  10. Repeat pouring the syrup over the peel until it is saturated and colored.

  11. Before candying, drain all syrup and dry the peel in a warm area.

  12. Boil a syrup to a higher temperature and grain it on the side of the pan.

  13. Lift each piece of peel out separately with some grained sugar and place on wire trays to cool.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

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