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Dessert

Iced Oranges

Coated orange slices dipped in egg white, icing sugar, and sifted white sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and sugar 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 ↓

Iced Oranges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the coating

  1. Peel the oranges carefully and divide them into thin portions.

  2. Whip the egg white and water together on a plate.

  3. Add the icing sugar and mix thoroughly.

  4. Strain the mixture through a sieve into another plate.

Coat and dry

  1. Dip the fruit into the mixture, shake off excess water, and roll in sifted white sugar.

  2. Place the coated oranges in rows to dry.

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

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

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Orange + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Provide the fruit that is coated and dried.
Egg white
Forms a thin, sticky coating that holds the sugar to the fruit.
Icing sugar
Sweetens the coating and helps it set smooth.
Sifted white sugar
Forms a crisp, sweet outer layer on the coated fruit.

The step that matters

Shaking off the excess coating before rolling. Too much liquid left on the fruit makes the coating thin and runny, so the sugar will not cling evenly. A light shake leaves a thin, even film that dries into a neat layer.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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