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Oranges

A preserved bitter orange recipe using syrup and lemon, stored in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Oranges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Select bitter oranges with clear skin and make a small hole at the stalk end.

  2. Scoop out all the pulp.

  3. Soak the oranges in a basin of salted water for 4 days.

  4. Drain and boil in water until a straw can easily pass through.

  5. Transfer the boiled oranges to a basin of cold water.

  6. Drain and remove any remaining pulp.

Make the syrup and preserve

  1. Place the oranges in an earthenware pan and cover with boiling syrup.

  2. Let sit for 5 days.

  3. Drain the oranges.

  4. Boil the syrup again, adding more syrup each time until it penetrates the peel.

  5. Put the oranges into jars.

  6. Cover when cold.

Make the sweet syrup and serve

  1. Peel a dozen sweet or bitter oranges, removing all white pith.

  2. In a saucepan, combine 8 oz of loaf sugar, 1 breakfast cup of water, juice of 2 lemons, and the rinds.

  3. Boil until reduced to a clear syrup.

  4. Strain the syrup.

  5. Color with cochineal.

  6. Pour over the oranges.

  7. Once cold, arrange the oranges in a glass dish.

  8. Pour the syrup over them before serving.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Bitter orange + orangetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetal (cream, earthy).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Bitter orange + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Bitter oranges
Their pulp and peel form the preserved fruit, with a bitter flavor that the syrup balances.
Loaf sugar
Sugar in the syrup preserves the peel and provides sweetness that offsets the bitterness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the syrup and balances its sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup repeatedly until it penetrates the peel. Sugar must slowly replace the water in the peel. Adding syrup in stages and reboiling it draws sugar in gradually, so the peel becomes preserved rather than hard or sticky on the outside.

Swap the bitter orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Bitter orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, sugar, lemon, orange. 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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