Why it works: Lime and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,332 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Candied Limes
Ingredients
Directions
Prick each lime with a needle to help the sugar penetrate.
Prepare a syrup by boiling sugar and water.
Drain the limes and reboil the syrup four times, allowing four days between each drainage.
Increase the syrup temperature by two degrees every four days until it reaches 33° Beaume.
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.
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Lime + sugartop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,332 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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