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To Preserve Limes

A method of preserving limes by soaking, scalding, and boiling them in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,332 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

To Preserve Limes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select green limes and carefully remove the insides with a penknife.

  2. Soak the limes in a mixture of salt and water for 4 hours.

  3. Remove the limes, wash them, and scald until all salt is gone.

Make the syrup

  1. Prepare a syrup by combining ¾ pound of sugar with 1 pound of limes.

  2. Skim the syrup and add the limes.

Cook

  1. Boil the limes in water for 20 minutes before adding them to the syrup.

  2. Let the limes boil in the syrup until clear.

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. Lime + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Limes
Provide the fruit, acidity and aroma, and become tender and translucent as they cook in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, in a thick syrup, helps preserve it by drawing out water.

The step that matters

Scald the limes until all salt is gone. Salt has to be fully rinsed and scalded out after soaking, or the preserved limes will taste harsh and salty. Scalding too long, however, can soften the peel and break down the fruit, so timing matters.

“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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