Why it works: Orange and barley work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 79 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓
Palace-bonbons
Ingredients
Directions
Remove the sugar from the candied orange or lemon peel.
Cut the peel into inch squares.
Stick each square onto the prong of a silver fork or osier twigs.
Dip the squares into liquid barley sugar.
Place them on a dish lightly rubbed with salad oil.
Once cold, store them in tin boxes or canisters with paper between each layer.
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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Orange + barleytop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together79 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,212 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Barley + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together755 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
Swap the orange
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Raisinfits better
- Orangethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against barley, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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