[Sca-cooks] Citrus Question

[Decker, Terry D.]

Using the peel is at least Elizabethean and probably earlier.  You might
also be able to concentrate the flavor by slow cooking to reduce the juice.
Concentrating a juice, then adding it to a dish or a sauce rather than
reducing the sauce appears to be of Roman origin.

For de Nola, the oranges are most likely Sevilles (bitter oranges).  Sweet
oranges don't start appearing in Europe until the early 16th Century.  Since
I can't find Sevilles locally, I like to use Valencias at 2:1 orange juice
to lemon.  Blood oranges are also a local rarity (although I saw some at
WalMart last night), so I've never tried them in this context and I haven't
compared them to Sevilles.

If you can find the bitter orange juice (imported for sauces) at a price you
can afford, great!  If you can't, you can probably get away with unsweetened
orange juice cut with lemon or verjuice.  If you do large quantities add the
lemon by taste.

Bear

> is: When did the technique of "zesting" citrus and adding it
> to a dish to up
> the citrus quotient come about?
> Also, what would be the best oranges to use & why? Because of
> a discussion
> that occured on this very list I used blood oranges for both
> dishes. Are
> they sour enough? Should I add lemon? Should I use a
> different orange? Is
> there any commercially available pre-squozed juice that would
> be a good
> substitute? (I do not relish the idea of squozing all of
> those oranges).
> If I cannot figure out a way to up the orange without
> compromising the dish
> then that is okey-dokey, I figured I would just garnish with
> pretty orange
> slices to advertise that there is orange in the dish.
>
> Glad Tidings,
> Serena da Riva