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Dessert

Oranges Preserved

A method of preserving oranges by soaking, boiling, and coating them in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Oranges Preserved

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Grate the rinds of the oranges slightly and score them with a knife, cutting into shapes without cutting deep.

  2. Soak the oranges in cold water for three days, changing the water two or three times daily.

  3. Tie the oranges in a bag and boil them in water until a pin can easily penetrate their skins.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. For the syrup, combine 1.5 pounds of sugar with ½ pint of water for each pound of oranges in a pot.

  2. Boil the sugar and water mixture for 1-2 minutes, then strain it through muslin.

  3. Add the oranges to the syrup and boil until the syrup thickens and turns a nice yellow color, turning the oranges to ensure even cooking.

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).

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

Oranges
Provide the fruit and rind that are preserved and candied in the syrup.
White sugar
Preserves the fruit and thickens the syrup as it cooks down, adding sweetness.
Water
Dissolves the sugar into syrup and carries the sugar into the fruit during cooking.

The step that matters

Boiling the oranges in syrup until thickened and yellow. Sugar must slowly penetrate the peel and the syrup must reduce to the right thickness. Turning the oranges keeps cooking even so no part is under-preserved or scorched.

“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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