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Dessert

Turkish Paste

A gelatin dessert made with orange rind, juice, sugar, and gelatine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Turkish Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break gelatine into pieces and soak in ½ cup cold water for 2 hours.

  2. Rinse a 5 by 6 inch pan with cold water.

Make the paste

  1. In a saucepan, combine ½ cup water and granulated sugar, then bring to a boil.

  2. Add the soaked gelatine to the boiling mixture and stir until dissolved.

  3. Remove from heat and add the grated orange rind and orange juice.

  4. Pour the mixture into the pan to a thickness of 1 inch.

Set and serve

  1. Once cooled, cut into cubes and roll in confectioner's sugar.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness and, dissolved in boiling water, helps form the syrup base.
Orange juice
Supplies the main orange flavour and liquid to the set paste.
Orange rind
Adds concentrated orange aroma and bitterness from its oils.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine in the boiling syrup. Gelatine must fully dissolve in hot liquid to set evenly; undissolved granules leave soft spots or grainy patches. Adding juice after removing from heat helps preserve the fresh orange flavour, which fades with prolonged boiling.

“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.

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