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Dessert

Green Ginger

A candied ginger confection made by steeping ginger, boiling with sugar, cinnamon, and orange peel, then drying and coating.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Ginger

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ginger

  1. Peel and slice the ginger into thin pieces.

  2. In a pot, steep the ginger in water until tender.

  3. Drain the ginger and reserve the liquid.

Make the syrup

  1. In the same liquid, add sugar, cinnamon, and orange peel; bring to a boil.

  2. Add the ginger back to the boiling syrup and cook for 20 minutes.

  3. Let it cool in a covered jar overnight.

  4. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes each day until it looks clear.

Candy and drain

  1. To candy, drain the ginger and dry it on sieves in a cool oven.

  2. Boil the syrup until it reaches a candy height, then add the ginger back in.

  3. Stir until the syrup coats the ginger, then remove with forks and let it drain on a wire rack.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Fresh ginger
Provides the main flavor and the firm, chewy texture of the candied pieces.
Sugar
Sweetens the ginger and, as the syrup thickens, forms the candy coating.
Water
Carries the ginger's flavor into the liquid used to tenderize and build the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup to candy height before adding the ginger back. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to coat and preserve the ginger. Too little cooking leaves it runny and sticky, while overcooking can make it hard or crystallize.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Pearfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, sugar, cinnamon. 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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