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Dessert

Turkish Delight

A gelatinous confection made with sugar, lemon juice, tartaric acid, and optional nuts, cooled and coated in icing sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 431 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Turkish Delight

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the syrup

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Add the sugar and stir over heat until dissolved.

  3. Boil briskly for 8 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove from heat and add tartaric acid and lemon juice.

  5. Add lemon essence to taste and color pale pink if desired.

  6. Bring to boiling point again.

Set in the tin

  1. Pour the mixture into a tin rinsed with cold water.

  2. After 5 minutes, remove any scum with a spoon.

  3. Drop in pistachio nuts or almonds if desired.

  4. Let the tin cool for 24 hours.

Unmold and finish

  1. Dip the tin quickly in boiling water.

  2. Invert the tin onto icing sugar.

  3. Let sit for an hour.

  4. Rub with icing sugar.

  5. Cut into squares.

  6. Roll each square in icing sugar mixed with a pinch of tartaric acid or cream of tartar.

  7. Pack in a box with tissue or kitchen paper, avoiding wax paper.

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 + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  3. Sugar + pistachiotop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

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

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

Castor sugar
Provides sweetness and bulk, and with boiling forms the chewy body of the sweet.
Instant powdered gelatine
Sets the cooked syrup into a firm, tender gel as it cools.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the sweetness.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp acidity and helps keep the sugar from crystallising.

The step that matters

Boil briskly for 8 minutes, stirring constantly. The mixture must concentrate enough to set firmly as it cools, and constant stirring stops the sugar from catching and burning on the base of the pan.

Swap the pistachio

The recipe marks pistachio as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon):

  1. Chickpeafits about as well
  2. Pistachiothe original
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Almondfits less well

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

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