Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Creams

A candy made from orange rind, sugar, and vanilla, hardened into strips or braids.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,371 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the orange paste

  1. Grate the rind and juice of one orange.

  2. Add enough icing sugar to the orange to mold it.

Make the candy

  1. Dissolve 1 teaspoon of gum arabic in 1 tablespoon of water.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the dissolved gum arabic, 1 pound of sugar, ½ teaspoon of cream of tartar, and 1 cup of water.

  3. Stir over medium heat until the sugar dissolves, then boil without stirring until it hardens in cold water.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

  5. Pour the mixture onto a buttered tin and let it cool slightly.

  6. Pull the candy like molasses candy until it is white, then cut into strips or braid it.

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 + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Granulated sugar
Forms the candy base that hardens into a firm, sweet structure as it cooks.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent sugar crystals from forming and keeping the candy smooth.
Orange rind and juice
Provides the orange flavour and moisture for the paste.
Icing sugar
Stiffens the orange mixture so it can be shaped.

The step that matters

Boiling without stirring until it hardens in cold water. Stirring after the sugar dissolves can trigger crystallisation, leaving the candy grainy. Cooking to the hard-crack stage gives the firm, brittle set needed for pulling and shaping.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, vanilla. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipes