Name: The Hutchess of Cleveland's Receipt for Preserving Lemons, Oranges and Citrons
Ingredients: good lemons; double-refined sugar (1¼ pounds); spring water (1¾ pints)

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 ↓

The Hutchess of Cleveland's Receipt for Preserving Lemons, Oranges and Citrons

Ingredients

good lemons
double-refined sugar (1¼ pounds)
spring water (1¾ pints)

Directions

Prepare the lemons

Scrape a little of the outer rind from the lemons and remove the seeds and juice.
Soak the lemons in spring water, changing the water twice a day for 1-2 days.

Cook

Boil the lemons until tender in a pot with the sugar and spring water.
Skim off any scum that forms on the surface.

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.

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

Lemons: Supply the fruit and aromatic rind that becomes tender and flavorful after cooking.
Double-refined sugar: Adds sweetness and helps preserve the lemons by drawing out moisture.

“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.