Ingredient

Blood orange

A blood orange is an ordinary sweet orange with anthocyanins in the flesh — the same pigments that colour blackcurrants and red cabbage. It tastes of orange with a berry note behind it, slightly less sweet and slightly more perfumed, and it is worth buying for the colour alone.

Why it goes red, and why not always

Anthocyanin production in the fruit needs cold nights. That is why blood oranges are a Mediterranean winter fruit and why the same variety grown in a warm climate produces a pale, faintly blushed orange rather than a deep red one. The colour is weather, not breeding alone.

This is also why the colour varies within a single box, and why the fruit gets redder as the season goes on. A pale one early in the season is not a failure; it simply has not had enough cold nights yet.

The pigment sits in the flesh and the juice, not in the peel, so the outside of a blood orange often looks like an ordinary orange with a rusty blush. You cannot reliably tell from the outside.

The three that reach the shops

Almost all European blood oranges are one of these.

Tarocco

The mildest colour and often the best flavour. Large, easy to peel, low acid, seedless. Italians generally rate it the finest eating orange of any kind.

Moro

The dramatic one. Nearly black-red flesh, an assertive raspberry note, more acid. The variety that makes the best-looking dish.

Sanguinello

Late in the season, orange-red rather than crimson, few seeds, very sweet. Keeps better on the tree than the other two.

Season

Roughly December to April in the northern hemisphere, with the deepest colour around February. Outside that window a "blood orange" is likely to be imported and pale.

Using the colour rather than losing it

Anthocyanins are pH-sensitive and heat-sensitive, which decides where this fruit works.

• Raw, in segments or slices, is where the colour is at its best. A salad with fennel and black olives, or with chicory and walnuts.
• In a granita or sorbet, where nothing is heated for long and the colour stays.
• As a juice in a dressing, where the acid actually deepens the red.
• In a curd or a posset, where the acidity keeps the pigment stable even with heat.
• Reduced into a syrup or glaze for duck, pork or pigeon — the colour dulls towards brick, but the flavour concentrates and is excellent with rich meat.
• Avoid long alkaline cooking. Baking soda in a batter shifts the pigment towards grey-blue. If a cake needs to look red, colour it with zest and serve the fruit alongside.

What it tastes like, honestly

The berry note is real but it is subtle, and a blood orange is not a hybrid with anything. Descriptions reaching for raspberry are pointing at a genuine aromatic similarity — some of the same volatile compounds are present — rather than at a fruit that tastes like a raspberry.

Acidity is generally a little higher than a navel and sugar a little lower, so a blood orange reads as more complex and less simply sweet. That is why it works in savoury dishes where an ordinary orange is cloying.

Common questions