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Dessert

Green Ginger

A candied ginger made by boiling ginger in a syrup of water, sugar, cinnamon, and orange peel.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ginger

  1. Soak the ginger roots in plenty of water.

  2. Boil the ginger in the same water until tender.

  3. Drain the ginger.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Make a syrup by boiling the water with sugar, cinnamon, and orange peel.

  2. Add the ginger to the boiling syrup.

  3. Cook the ginger in the syrup for 20 minutes.

  4. Let the mixture cool in a covered jar overnight.

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

Dry and finish

  1. Drain the ginger and dry it on sieves in a cool oven.

  2. Boil the syrup until it reaches a candy height.

  3. Add the ginger to the syrup.

  4. Stir until the syrup coats the ginger completely.

  5. Remove the ginger with forks and place on a wire rack to drain.

  6. Once cool, store in boxes lined with paper.

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 roots
Provide the main flavour and the tender, chewy texture of the finished sweet.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, as it thickens, forms a coating that preserves the ginger.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to candy height. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to coat and preserve the ginger. If it is too thin, the ginger stays wet and spoils; if overcooked, it turns hard and sugary.

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.

More green ginger recipes

Preserved 3

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