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Dessert

Orange Blossom Candy

A candied confection made with sugar, water, egg white, and orange blossoms.

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 Blossom Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the water and sugar together until the mixture reaches a temperature of more than three parts boiled.

  2. Gently add the orange blossoms to the syrup.

Shape and store

  1. Use a large spoon to drop the mixture onto thick, dry sheets of writing paper or trays in cake shapes.

  2. Remove the candy from the paper before it is completely cold.

  3. Store the cooled candy in airtight tin boxes or canisters to keep it fresh for over a year.

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. Sugar + eggtop 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 syrup base that sets into the firm, sweet body of the candy as it cools.
Orange blossoms
Adds the floral orange aroma that flavours the candy.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be cooked into a syrup.

The step that matters

Removing the candy from the paper before it is completely cold. If the candy is left until fully cold it can bond to the paper and tear. Lifting it while still slightly warm keeps the shapes intact, since sugar syrup hardens as it cools.

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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