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Dessert

Carrot and Lemon Marmalade

A sweet preserve made from carrots, sugar, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,351 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Carrot and Lemon Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make carrot puree as previously described.

  2. Cut lemons into thin slices.

  3. Soak the sliced lemons overnight in a bowl just covered with water.

  4. Put the lemon seeds in a cup with a little water.

Cook and jar

  1. Boil the carrot puree, lemon slices, and sugar together for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the jelly from the lemon seeds.

  3. Pour into jars and seal.

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. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,211 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

Carrots
Forms the bulk of the spread and gives it body and mild sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the spread and helps it thicken and set as it cooks.
Lemons
Adds acidity and aroma, and the seeds supply pectin to help the marmalade set.

The step that matters

Boil the carrot puree, lemon slices, and sugar together for 30 minutes. Sugar and pectin only set into a gel once the mixture has boiled long enough to concentrate. Boiling too briefly leaves the marmalade runny, while overcooking can darken it and make it stiff.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Carrotthe 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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