Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and 53,532 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Fresh Fruits for the Table
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Take one cup of sugar and one cup of water.
Boil the sugar and water slowly together for thirty minutes.
Add the juice of one small lemon.
Place the vessel in a basin of hot water to prevent the syrup from getting stiff.
Dip the fruit
Dip ripe fruits into the syrup and lay them upon a buttered plate until cold.
Dip currants by holding them by their stems.
Take grapes up on the point of a long pin, dip them in the sugar, and lay them carefully aside to dry.
Remove oranges from their skins and pull them apart into as small pieces as one likes.
Dip the orange pieces with the assistance of the pin, after the fashion of the grapes.
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. See the original page.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsAroma overlaplowMentioned together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and lemon share little aroma chemistry, yet 53,532 recipes mention both: they likely 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
- Sugar
- Forms the syrup that coats the fruit and sets into a glossy, crisp shell as it cools.
- Lemon
- Its juice adds acidity that helps keep the syrup from crystallising too readily.
The step that matters
Keep the syrup from getting stiff. As syrup cools it thickens and can crystallise. Keeping the vessel in hot water holds the syrup fluid enough to coat the fruit evenly. If it stiffens, the coating turns grainy or brittle instead of smooth.
“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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