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Orange Syrup

A sweet syrup made by boiling orange juice with sugar until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Orange Syrup

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 Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Peel the oranges, then squeeze and strain the juice from the pulp.

  2. Combine the juice and sugar in a pot.

Cook and strain

  1. Boil and skim the mixture until it becomes creamy.

  2. Strain it through a flannel bag.

Bottle

  1. Let it cool, then pour into bottles and cork tightly.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

Orange juice
Provides the liquid base and the bright citrus flavor of the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, as water evaporates, thickens it and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Boil and skim until creamy. As water evaporates, the sugar concentrates, giving the syrup body and helping it keep. Stop once it turns creamy, since overcooking can darken the syrup or make it crystallise, and skimming removes foam that would spoil its clarity.

“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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