Oranges are classified into sweet and bitter categories, and popular sweet varieties are Valencia, navel,
Jaffa and the hybrid blood orange. The bitter oranges are utilized in jams, marmalades, preserves, and liqueurs such as Cointreau.
Oranges are indigenous to China and the south Asian subcontinent, and were first cultivated in the Middle East around the 9th century, and it was Christopher Columbus who introduced orange seeds to North America in the 16th century.
The word orange comes from an old Sanskrit word nagarunga, which means “fruit beloved by elephants”. Later on, the word became narandj in Arabic, and then naranja via the Moorish conquests in Spain. The first recorded use of the word in the form orange is in a Middle English text from somewhere around 1380.
Today Brazil is the world’s largest producer of oranges, and in the United States oranges are the biggest fruit crop.
