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Grapefruit Peel Candied

Candied grapefruit peel made by boiling, sugaring, and rolling in sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Grapefruit and sugar work together. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Grapefruit Peel Candied

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peel

  1. Remove the tough thin white skin from grapefruit halves, leaving the thick white part. Cut the peel into strips or 1-inch squares.

  2. Place the peel in cold water and boil for 20 minutes. Drain and repeat this process with boiling water three more times, for a total of 80 minutes of boiling.

Candy and coat

  1. After the final draining, add a scant measure of sugar equal to the amount of peel you initially cut. Cook until thick.

  2. Drain again and roll the peel in fine sugar. Store in boxes; it will keep for weeks.

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. Grapefruit + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together309 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Grapefruit peel
Provides the candied body and bitter citrus flavour once softened and sweetened.
Sugar
Sweetens the peel and, once cooked thick, preserves it and gives it a glossy, non-sticky coating.

The step that matters

Repeated boiling in fresh water. Boiling in several changes of water draws out the bitterness and softens the thick white pith. Skipping changes or shortening the boils leaves the peel bitter and tough, so the sugar cannot pull it into a tender candy.

“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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