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Syrups, &C

A syrup made from sweet and Seville orange juice, sugar, isinglass, and egg whites, then aged in a cask.

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 ↓

Syrups, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Squeeze the juice from the Seville oranges and the sweet oranges.

  2. Boil the juice with the sugar for 15 minutes.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then strain it through muslin.

Clarify and cask

  1. Add the rinds of the Seville oranges and the dissolved isinglass to the mixture.

  2. Incorporate the beaten egg whites.

  3. Loosely cork the cask and seal it tightly after a few days.

  4. After two months, check the syrup and bottle it if fine.

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. Sugar + eggtop 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

Sweet oranges
Supply most of the juice, giving the syrup its main body and sweetness.
Seville oranges
Add sharp acidity and aromatic oil from the rinds for a bitter-citrus character.
Loaf sugar
Dissolves into the boiled juice to sweeten it and thicken it into a syrup.
Isinglass
A fish-derived gelatin that binds fine particles so they can be strained or settled out, clearing the syrup.
Egg whites
Coagulate and carry suspended particles to the top or bottom, further clarifying the syrup.

The step that matters

Incorporate the beaten egg whites. Egg whites must be evenly mixed in so they can coagulate and trap cloudy particles during clarifying. Uneven mixing leaves cloudiness behind, so the syrup will not clear properly.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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