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 ↓
To Preserve Oranges or Lemons in Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Cut a hole at the stalk of the fruit the size of a shilling and scrape out the pulp without cutting the rind.
Soak the fruit in spring water for 2 days, changing the water twice a day.
On the last day, boil the fruit tender in a covered pot over low heat.
Make the syrup
In a separate pot, combine 2 lbs of sugar and 1 pint of water with the juice of the orange; boil to make a syrup and clarify it.
Skim the syrup well and let it cool.
Preserve in syrup
Boil the fruit in the syrup for 1 hour; repeat daily until the fruit is clear.
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.
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Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Double-refined sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and, as a thick syrup, preserves it by drawing out water.
- Oranges or lemons
- Provide the fruit whose rind is kept whole and filled with syrup as the preserve.
The step that matters
Boil the fruit in the syrup for 1 hour; repeat daily until the fruit is clear.. Sugar must replace the water in the fruit gradually. Boiling too hard or too fast can toughen or break the rind, and the fruit only turns clear once enough syrup has penetrated over repeated days.
“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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