Skip to main content
Dessert

Citron Preserves

Preserves made from citron, sugar, and lemon, boiled and simmered.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Boil the citron pieces in weak alum water until soft.

  2. Drain off the water.

Make the preserves

  1. In a pot, dissolve the sugar.

  2. Once hot, add the citron and simmer slowly for one hour.

  3. Add the sliced lemon and stir well.

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
Softens during boiling and simmering, becoming tender enough to be preserved in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, helps preserve it and thicken the syrup.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sweet citron.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly. A slow simmer softens the citron gradually and lets the sugar syrup penetrate the pieces. Vigorous boiling can break them apart and make the preserves tough or ragged.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes