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Dessert

Orange Preserves

A preserve made by simmering sliced oranges with sugar until thick.

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 ↓

Orange Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover the oranges with cold water and let them soak overnight.

  2. The next morning, drain the cold water and cover the oranges with hot water that can be borne by the hand.

  3. Remove the rind and as much of the white inner lining as possible.

  4. Quarter half of the oranges and slice the other half, removing all seeds.

  5. Take the rind of 3 or 4 oranges, remove the white part, and cut it into small pieces; add this to the fruit.

Cook

  1. Combine the prepared fruit with 7 pounds of white sugar and simmer on low heat, skimming frequently.

  2. Once it comes to a boil, boil for 20 minutes.

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, pectin-rich pith and peel, and the bright citrus flavour of the preserve.
White sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, at high concentration, helps it thicken and keep.

The step that matters

Simmer on low heat and skim frequently. Simmering gently keeps the fruit from scorching on the bottom of the pan while sugar dissolves and the syrup thickens. Skimming removes foam and loose bits that would otherwise cloud the preserve and affect its flavour.

“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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