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Oranges Filled with Jelly

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and gelatin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Oranges Filled with Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut a round hole in the top of each orange, about the size of a shilling.

  2. Carefully empty the oranges without breaking the rinds and place them in cold water.

  3. Make jelly from the juice of the oranges, pressing and straining it until clear.

  4. Color half of the jelly with prepared cochineal and leave the other half pale.

  5. Once the jelly is nearly cold, drain and wipe the orange rinds.

  6. Fill the rinds with alternate stripes of the two jellies.

  7. When the jellies are completely cold, cut the oranges into quarters and arrange them on a dish with light branches of myrtle.

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 + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Orange + gelatintop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

Orange and sugar 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

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, gelatin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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