Skip to main content
Preserve

To Preserve Citron

A method of preserving citron by slicing, sugaring, and boiling with lemon and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Preserve Citron

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the citron

  1. Pare the citrons and cut them into 1.5‑inch thick slices, then into strips of the same thickness.

  2. Remove all the seeds with a small knife.

  3. Weigh the citron and for each pound, add a pound of white sugar.

Make the preserve

  1. In a pot, combine 1 pint of water and the sugar to make a syrup; simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the citron to the syrup and boil for 1 hour or until tender.

  3. Before removing from heat, add the sliced lemons and root ginger.

  4. Do not boil long after adding the lemon and ginger, and do not stir while boiling.

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 + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 bulk of the preserve and becomes tender and translucent as it cooks in syrup.
White sugar
Makes the syrup that preserves the citron and gives it sweetness and body.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright flavour to balance the sweet syrup.
Root ginger
Adds warm aroma and a gentle spicy bite to the preserve.

The step that matters

Do not boil long after adding the lemon and ginger, and do not stir while boiling. Prolonged boiling breaks down the delicate citrus flavour and aroma, and stirring can break the citron pieces apart and leave the syrup cloudy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger. 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.

More preserved citron recipes

Melon 10 See all 34 →

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes