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Dessert

Citron Preserves

Preserves made from sliced citron, sugar, and lemons boiled and sealed in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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 Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the citron

  1. Pare off the rind from the citron and cut it into thin slices, about two inches long.

Make the preserves

  1. In a pot, boil the citron in a little water until tender.

  2. Add the sugar and sliced lemons to the pot and boil for twenty minutes.

  3. Remove the fruit from the pot. Boil the syrup down a bit.

  4. Return the fruit to the pot and boil for a while longer.

  5. Seal the mixture in cans or jars.

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

Citron
Provides the main bulk and texture of the preserve as it becomes tender when boiled.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens the syrup as it boils down, helping it keep.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma that brighten the sweet citron flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup down. Sugar and fruit must be cooked long enough for the syrup to thicken and reach a concentration that helps preserve the fruit. Too little boiling leaves the preserve thin and less stable.

“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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