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Cokdial, Orange

A sweet orange-flavored syrup made with sugar, water, tartaric acid, orange essence, and saffron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and saffron work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 185 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cokdial, Orange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the distilled water.

  2. Allow the mixture to cool.

Flavour and serve

  1. Add tartaric acid, essence of orange, and saffron to the cooled mixture.

  2. To serve, mix two tablespoons of the syrup with half a pint of water.

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 + saffrontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Sugar + saffrontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Cane sugar
Dissolves into the water to form a sweet syrup that forms the body of the cordial.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness and gives a fresh, tart bite.
Essence of orange
Provides the main citrus aroma and flavour.
Saffron
Adds a subtle aroma and a golden colour to the cordial.

Swap the saffron

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange. 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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