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Dessert

Orange Sauce

A sweet orange sauce thickened with arrowroot, made from orange juice, pulp, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Orange Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the rind of 2 oranges onto lump sugar.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, combine the juice and pulp of 4 oranges.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of arrowroot mixed with a little water and the syrup.

  3. Stir over heat until the mixture thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Orange + arrowroottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

  5. Arrowroot + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together37 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 juice and pulp that form the sauce's base and flavour.
Arrowroot
Thickens the juice and syrup into a glossy sauce when heated.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Lump sugar
Absorbs orange oil from the rind, carrying its aroma into the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir over heat until the mixture thickens. Arrowroot thickens only when heated and stirred, and it can clump if it is not first mixed with water. Once it has thickened, keep the heat gentle, because prolonged boiling can thin the starch's hold and dull the sauce.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against arrowroot, syrup, 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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