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Dessert

Lemons Preserved

A method of preserving lemons by salting, boiling, and storing them in syrup with sugar and brandy paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemons Preserved

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Wipe the lemons well and thinly pare off the yellow rind.

  2. Cut out a piece of rind at the blossom end and remove the pulp and seeds.

  3. Rub the lemons with coarse sea salt and soak them in cold water for a week, fully covered.

  4. Boil the lemons in fresh saltwater for 20 minutes.

Make the syrup

  1. Prepare a syrup with 1 pound of loaf sugar and 1 quart of water, skim it well, and add the lemons.

  2. Boil the lemons in the syrup for 5-6 minutes for 4 consecutive days.

Rest and reboil

  1. Place the lemons in a jar, cover with syrup, and let stand for 6 weeks.

  2. Make a thick syrup with best refined sugar and water, add the lemons, and boil gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Let the lemons rest, then boil them again at short intervals for 24 hours until plump and clear.

Jar and seal

  1. Transfer the lemons to jars and pour cold syrup over them, cover with brandy paper, and tie with bladder.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Lemons
The main ingredient; the rind softens and becomes tender and candied as it cures in salt and syrup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the rind and helps preserve the lemons during the long soak.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, as a concentrated syrup, helps preserve the fruit by drawing out moisture.
Best refined sugar
Makes the thick final syrup that sweetens the lemons and helps them keep their shape and clarity.

The step that matters

Boiling the lemons in syrup for 4 consecutive days. Heating the lemons briefly each day, rather than for long periods, lets the rind soften and take up syrup gradually while the fruit keeps its shape. Overcooking can break the peel down and make it mushy or bitter.

“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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