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 ↓
Justice's Orange Syrup
Ingredients
Directions
Squeeze the oranges and strain the juice from the pulp into a large pot.
Boil the juice with 1½ pounds of fine sugar for each pint of juice.
Skim the mixture well and let it stand until cold.
Bottle and cork it tightly.
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.
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Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,212 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
- Fine sugar
- Dissolves into the juice and, once boiled, thickens it into a syrup with sweetness and preservation.
- Orange juice
- Provides the flavour and acidity, and forms the liquid base of the syrup.
The step that matters
Skim the mixture well. Boiling brings impurities and foam to the surface. Removing them keeps the syrup clear and stops off-flavours and cloudiness from carrying into the bottled product.
“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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