The Orange Files



So you've come to learn...
Welcome to my Orange page, where you will learn, among other things, how to peel an orange. It is a little know fact that under 7% of the United States population know how to peel an orange correctly. Sure you can tear off the peel bit by bit, or take a knife to it, but there is a much easier, much more elegant way.




A little bit 'o' background...
Oranges come in many different shapes and sizes. We will be dealing in particular with navel oranges, the popular favorite, although all of the facts, tips, and techniques you learn today are easily transferable to any other orange breed.

Citrus fruits are one of the smartest forms of vegetation, second only to those crafy legumes. And the orange is by far the smartest of the citrus fruits (an interesting side note -- it was commonly thought that limes were the least intelligent of the citrus fruits, until 1921, when Henry Mendel conducted the first real scientific experiments and determined the grapefruit to be, in fact, the most intellectually deficient citrus fruit).

The first records of oranges appear in the pre-historic caves of the Nah'Tbah valley in southern Egypt. Cave paintings of people eating small round objects were thought to be depictions of either orange consumption or canabalistic gall bladder consumption. It was later clarified, with the assistance of the Rosetta Stone, that the objects in question were most certainly oranges, as the Pharoh and his company all enjoyed the sweet fruits whenever they arrived from the fertile lands of the Tigris in Mesapotamia. Oranges may have had an even earlier history -- it is rumored that an orange famine was responsible for the fall of Jericho in 25,000 B.C. However, the source of this information is nothing more than ancient world folk tale.

The regional appeal of oranges grew over the centuries. The Romans ate oranges before going into battle because they thought the pulp would thicken their blood and reduce bleeding from injuries. Christ's apostles were avid orange eaters, and King Arthur based his concept of the roundtable on the shape of an orange. It has been said that Sir Isaac Newton was in fact hit over the head with an orange (and not an apple) by a group of local boys playing red-ball (a popular English pastime in the seventeenth century played with an orange -- why it's called red-ball then, as opposed to orange-ball, is unknown).

The orange enjoyed its slow and steady rise to fame, but would soon realize that with such popularity would come grave responsibility. The Great Orange Slaughter (1857), the French Citrus Revolt of 1731 (a harrowing foreshadow of the events to come in France), and the incident with clandestine preauthenticators (1907) were all the direct or indirect result of a few oranges with chips on their shouders and a few bucks in the bank. Soon after the preauthentication incident, the U.S. imposed restrictions on oranges geo-political decision making abilities. Most other countries followed suit soon after, and by 1942 all oranges had again been reduced to lead similar lives to their other citrus brothers.




To peel an orange... When peeling an orange do you:

- use your nails to pick at the skin until you break through?
- bite, poke, prod, or cut the skin to get started?
- end up breaking the inner-dermal layers of the orange?
- have hands covered in orange juice when you're done?

If you answered ANY of these questions with a yes, chances are you don't know how to properly peel an orange. A true orange peeler can peel nearly any orange in about 10-15 seconds, leaving the entire peel in ONE PIECE (that's a lot easier than it may seem). Here's where we show you how...



Step #1 - Orange Selection

Chosing the right orange is the first, and arguably the most important step. The proper orange makes learning how to peel much easier, and a very poorly chosen orange might be difficult for even the most experienced peeler to peel.

The peel of an orange goes through physical changes throughout the life of the orange. When the orange is unripe, the peel is very smooth on the outside, somewhat thinner, and tougher. As the orange becomes more and more ripe, it's peel gets thicker, but not much stronger -- the thickness is just the soft, inner rind. Also, the peel becomes more rough -- there are physical pock marks on the orange, or some other form of texture. What also begins to happen, as an orange gets older, is it dries out -- some of the juice inside it evaporates. The orange itself shrinks when some of it's juice evaporates, but the peel remains the same size; thus the orange itself pulls away from the peel as it looses water (juice).

Why is this important to know when peeling an orange? When the peel has separated from the orange a bit, it is much easier to remove, particularly with the technique I will be showing you. However, we run into a paradox. We want the orange to be dehydrated enough so that the peel has separated, but not so dehydrated that once we peel it it is dried out and not at all juicy. So it is important to be able to select an orange that is just dried out enough.