Skip to main content
Dessert

To Butter Oranges

A dessert of Seville oranges filled with a sweet butter and wine syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: White wine and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Butter Oranges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Grate the rind of the oranges and cut a hole at the blunt end to remove the pulp, seeds, and juice.

  2. Rub the oranges with salt and soak them in water briefly.

  3. Boil the oranges in fresh water until tender, changing the water to reduce bitterness.

Make the syrup and filling

  1. Make a thin syrup with fine sugar.

  2. Boil the oranges in the syrup, turning them to coat evenly.

  3. Mix sugar with the pulp.

  4. Heat the mixture until boiling.

  5. Add 1 tablespoon of white wine for each orange.

  6. Boil again.

  7. Stir in butter to thicken.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the oranges with the mixture.

  2. Serve with some syrup in the dish, topping with the reserved bits.

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. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Orange + white winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together730 recipes

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

  4. White wine + rosetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together162 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Seville oranges
Provide the bitter peel and pulp that flavour the dish and form the shell.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the syrup and filling and helps give the oranges a glossy coating.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and helps thicken the pulp filling.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Changing the water while boiling the oranges. Boiling in fresh water several times draws out bitter compounds from the peel, so skipping the water changes leaves the oranges noticeably bitter. Cooking until tender also softens the rind so it can be filled and eaten.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, white wine, butter, 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes