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Preserved Citron

A preserved citron made by soaking, cooking, and sweetening with sugar, ginger, citrus, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Preserved Citron

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the citron

  1. Cut the citron in half, slice into pieces a little more than 1 inch wide, peel, seed, and cut into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Soak the citron overnight in cold water (1 quart of water per quart of fruit) with a lump of alum dissolved in each quart.

  3. Rinse the citron in salted water (1 teaspoon of salt per quart of water) and cook for 40 minutes in fresh warm water (1 quart of water per quart of citron).

Make the syrup

  1. Soak the ginger in cold water for 30 minutes to make it easier to scrape.

  2. Boil 6 pounds of sugar with 1 pint of water and the ginger root to make a syrup.

  3. Tie the cinnamon stick, cloves, and allspice in cheesecloth and cook them in the syrup for 10 minutes.

Cook and preserve

  1. Add the drained citron to the syrup and cook slowly for 30 minutes, skimming off any foam and transferring to a stone jar.

  2. Add 2 thinly sliced lemons (cooked for 15 minutes in ½ cup of cold water) to the syrup and boil for another 30 minutes, skimming as needed.

  3. Pour the syrup over the citron and keep in a cold place; once cold, add the thinly sliced orange.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Citron
Forms the main fruit body and absorbs the sugar syrup as it cooks.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the dish and, in syrup form, preserves the fruit by drawing out water.
Alum
Firms the citron so its pieces hold their shape during long cooking.
Ginger root
Adds a warm, spicy aroma to the syrup.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Adding the citron to the syrup. Cooking slowly and skimming off foam keeps the syrup clear and lets the sugar penetrate the fruit gradually. Boiling hard can toughen or break the pieces and leave the syrup cloudy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, ginger, orange, cinnamon, clove, allspice):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, orange, cinnamon, clove, allspice. 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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