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Dessert

Candied Lemon Peel

A sweet confection made by drying lemon peel in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Candied Lemon Peel

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 ↓

Candied Lemon Peel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peel

  1. Cut the peel from the lemons into long, thin strips and soak them in a strong saltwater solution overnight.

  2. Wash the peels in three changes of water the next morning.

  3. Boil the peels in soft water until tender and almost translucent, but not so soft that they break.

  4. Dissolve ½ teaspoon of powdered alum in enough cold water to cover the peels and let them soak for 2 hours.

Make the syrup and candy the peel

  1. In the meantime, prepare the syrup by stirring the sugar into 3 cups of water, adding the strained juice of 3 lemons, and boiling until it "ropes" from the spoon.

  2. Add the lemon peels to the syrup and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the peels and spread them on a sieve, shaking gently and tossing them occasionally until they are almost dry.

Dry and store

  1. Sift granulated sugar over the peels and lay them out on a clean cloth.

  2. Allow them to air dry completely, then pack in a glass jar.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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
Provide the peel, which is candied, and the juice that flavours the syrup.
Loaf sugar
Forms the syrup that penetrates the peel, sweetening it and preserving it as it dries.
Powdered alum
Firms the peel so it holds its shape and stays crisp during long simmering.

The step that matters

Boiling the peels until tender but not broken. Overcooking softens the peel's structure so it falls apart, while undercooking leaves it tough and unable to absorb syrup evenly.

“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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