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 Paste
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Squeeze the juice from the Seville oranges and boil the rinds until soft.
Scoop out the pulp with a thin wooden spoon.
Pound the rinds in a mortar with half of the juice.
Rub the mixture through a sieve and keep it on the fire until it thickens like marmalade.
Add sugar and set
Weigh the mixture and add 2 lbs of sugar for every 1 lb of pulp.
Boil for 10 minutes, then spread on tin plates to dry.
Cut into desired shapes and store in boxes.
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
- Seville oranges
- Provide the juice, pulp and rinds that form the paste's bitter, aromatic base.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the paste and, as it cooks, helps it thicken and set firm enough to cut.
The step that matters
Rub the mixture through a sieve and keep it on the fire until it thickens like marmalade. Sugar is added only after the mixture is thick, because the pulp must be concentrated first. Sugar draws water out and sets the paste when boiled, so a thin base will not firm up properly when it dries.
“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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