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Dessert

Lemon Citron

A preserved lemon peel sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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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 ↓

Lemon Citron

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Turn on water and soak fresh lemon peels until all the white pulp can be scraped off.

  2. Boil the peels until soft.

Preserve

  1. Preserve the peels in an equal weight of sugar.

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 + 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

Fresh lemon peels
Provide the main flavor and the candied peel itself once softened and preserved.
Sugar
Preserves the peels and adds sweetness by soaking into them in an equal weight.

The step that matters

Scraping off the white pulp after soaking. The white pith is bitter, and leaving it on the peel makes the candy taste harsh. Soaking first loosens it so it can be scraped off fully.

“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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