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Dessert

Orange-flower Candy

A candied confection made by boiling sugar with water, egg white, and orange blossom petals.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Orange-flower Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Beat the water and egg white together.

  2. Pour the mixture over the sugar lumps.

  3. Let it sit for a while, then place it over a clear fire.

Cook the sugar

  1. Boil for a few minutes, then set aside until the scum subsides.

  2. Clear off the scum and boil the sugar until very thick.

Add the petals

  1. Gradually stir in the orange blossom petals.

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. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + orangetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Sugar
Forms the candy's body and sweetness as it thickens into a syrup.
Egg white
Helps collect and lift impurities from the syrup as it heats, leaving it clearer.
Orange blossom petals
Provide the orange blossom aroma that flavours the finished candy.

The step that matters

Clear off the scum and boil the sugar until very thick.. Scum left in the syrup can cloud and spoil the candy's clarity, so it must be removed before the sugar is cooked. Boiling to a very thick syrup concentrates the sugar so the candy sets firm rather than sticky.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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