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Preserve

Orange

A sweet preserve made by boiling oranges and beating their pounded peel and pulp with sugar.

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 ↓

Orange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the oranges in water for 4 hours.

  2. Boil the oranges until tender.

  3. Cut the oranges in half and remove the insides.

Make the paste

  1. For every pound of pounded peel, add 1 pound of sugar.

  2. Remove skins and seeds from the pulp.

  3. Add an equal weight of sugar to the pulp and beat well.

  4. Mix the pulp with the peel.

  5. Beat again in a mortar.

Store

  1. Store in pots covered with paper.

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

Oranges
Supply the peel and pulp, which give the paste its bulk and bitter-citrus flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the fruit, helps the paste thicken and hold its body.

The step that matters

Boil the oranges until tender.. Boiling softens the peel's fibers and pectin, so it can be pounded to a smooth paste. Under-cooked peel stays tough and gritty.

“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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