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Dessert

Candied Orange or Lemon Peels

A sweet treat made by drying citrus peels in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Candied Orange or Lemon Peels

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the peel

  1. Clean the lemon or orange peels, removing all pulp.

  2. Soak the peels in salt and water for 2 days.

  3. Scald the peels.

  4. Drain the peels until dry.

Candy the peel

  1. Boil the peels in a thin syrup until they look clear.

  2. Remove the peels.

  3. Prepare a thick syrup with fine loaf sugar.

  4. Simmer the peels in the thick syrup until the sugar candies around the peels.

Dry and finish

  1. Lay the peels on a wire rack to drain.

  2. Sprinkle the peels with sifted sugar.

  3. Dry the peels in a cool oven (300°F / 150°C).

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Lemon or orange peels
The main ingredient, which becomes the candied confection once soaked and syruped.
Fine loaf sugar
Sweetens the peel and, as syrup, candies it so it sets firm and glossy.

The step that matters

Simmer the peels in the thick syrup. The sugar must be concentrated enough to replace the water in the peel. If the syrup is too weak or the simmer is cut short, the sugar will not candy around the peel and the peel stays soft and sticky.

“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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