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Dessert

Candied Oranges

Candied oranges are orange quarters soaked in a sugar syrup until the sugar crystallizes.

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 ↓

Candied Oranges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and quarter the oranges.

  2. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water; bring to a boil.

  3. Boil until the syrup hardens in water.

Coat and dry

  1. Remove from heat and dip the orange quarters in the syrup.

  2. Place the dipped oranges on a fine sieve over a platter to drain.

  3. Let them cool until the sugar crystallizes.

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

Sugar
Forms the syrup that hardens into a crisp, sweet candied coating as it cools.
Oranges
Provide the fruit base whose flavor and texture the sugar coating preserves.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be heated into a syrup.

The step that matters

Boil until the syrup hardens in water. Sugar syrup must reach the hard-crack stage so the coating sets crisp when cooled. Stopping early leaves a sticky, soft coating, while going too far can scorch the sugar and turn it bitter.

“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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