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Dessert

Orange-flower Candy

A sweet confection made from sugar, water, egg white, and orange blossom petals.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and orange 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-flower Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Beat together the water and the white of the egg in a bowl.

  2. Pour the mixture over the sugar.

  3. Let it sit for a short time.

  4. Place the mixture over a clear fire.

Boil and clarify

  1. Boil for a few minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and let the scum subside, then clear the scum off.

  3. Boil the sugar until it becomes very thick.

Add orange blossoms and set

  1. Gradually stir in the orange-blossom petals.

  2. Continue stirring until the candy forms a white mass in the pan.

  3. Pour the mixture into small paper cases or onto dishes.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + orangetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Sugar
Forms the bulk of the candy and sets into a firm, crystalline mass as it cooks down.
Egg white
Its proteins rise to the surface as scum when heated, carrying impurities that are then skimmed off to clarify the syrup.
Orange-blossoms
Supply the floral aroma that flavours the finished candy.

The step that matters

Continuing to stir until a white mass forms. Stirring while the sugar thickens encourages fine crystals, giving a opaque, creamy-white texture instead of a clear glassy one. Stopping too early leaves the candy soft and sticky.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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