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Dessert

Citron Preserves

A preserve made from citron pieces boiled in alum water, sweetened with sugar, optionally with raisins and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Citron Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the citron

  1. Boil the citron pieces in weak alum water until soft.

  2. Drain the water and add 1 pound of sugar for each pound of citron.

Cook the preserve

  1. For every 5 pounds of preserve, add 1 pound of raisins and 1 sliced lemon.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in the mixture.

  3. When hot, add the fruit and simmer slowly for 1 hour.

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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

Citron
Forms the bulk of the preserve and becomes tender when boiled until soft.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps set it into a thick, spreadable texture.
Alum
Firms the citron so its pieces hold their shape during long simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 1 hour. Simmering gently lets the sugar penetrate the citron and thicken the syrup without scorching. Too rapid a boil can break down the fruit and burn the sugar on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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