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Citron Melon Preserve

A preserve made from citron and lemon slices boiled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Citron Melon Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the citron

  1. Remove the peel from the citron and cut it into thin slices.

  2. Boil the citron slices in water until tender.

Cook the lemons and syrup

  1. Remove the citron and boil the lemons in the same water for about 20 minutes.

  2. Take out the lemons, add the sugar, and if necessary, a little more water.

  3. Boil the mixture until clear, then add the boiled citron and let it boil for a few minutes.

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

Citron
Forms the main body of the preserve, becoming tender when boiled and holding its shape in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, once dissolved and boiled, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Lemons
Adds acidity and aroma, and their boiling water helps flavour the citron.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until clear. Sugar must dissolve fully and the syrup must reach a boil before the citron is added; undissolved sugar can crystallise and leave the preserve cloudy or grainy.

“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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