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Dessert

Lemon Marmalade

A preserved citrus spread made by boiling lemon rind and juice with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Lemon Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Squeeze the juice from the lemons and strain out the seeds.

  2. Shred the rind of all the lemons.

  3. Boil the rind in plenty of water for 20 minutes.

  4. Drain and put the rind in fresh water, then boil again for 20 minutes.

  5. Repeat this process two more times for a total of three boils.

Make and jar the marmalade

  1. Combine the lemon juice and rinds, adding 1 pound of sugar for every pound of the mixture.

  2. Boil until thoroughly heated.

  3. Pour into small jars or glasses and seal like jelly.

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
Provide the juice and shredded rind that form the marmalade's bright, sharp base.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with the cooked fruit, helps it set and keep.

The step that matters

Boiling the rind three times. Lemon rind is bitter; repeated boiling in fresh water draws out bitterness, and skipping a boil leaves the marmalade noticeably harsher.

“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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