Why it works: Sugar and orange 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 ↓
Sugar Kisses
Ingredients
Directions
Melt the powdered sugar in a saucepan over medium heat.
Add the juice of the sweet orange and let it boil.
Drop the mixture onto a slab in small amounts.
Before they cool, stamp the drops with a wafer stamp.
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.
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Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,212 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar and orange 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
- Powdered sugar
- Dissolves and melts to form the sweet, glossy base that sets as the kisses cool.
- Sweet orange juice
- Adds moisture and acidity, thinning the melted sugar and giving the kisses their citrus flavor.
The step that matters
Stamp the drops before they cool. Once the melted sugar cools it hardens quickly and loses its shape, so the wafer stamp must press the drops while they are still soft and pliable.
“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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