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Dessert

Lemon Caramel

A sugar caramel flavored with lemon essence, poured onto a sheet, cut into squares, and cooled.

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

Lemon Caramel

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Break the loaf sugar into pieces and barely cover it with water.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reaches the snap stage, stirring continuously until it slightly colors.

  3. Move the pot to the side and add 6-7 drops of lemon essence, adjusting to taste.

Set and cool

  1. Pour the mixture onto an oiled baking sheet.

  2. Mark the mixture in squares with the back of a knife.

  3. Let it cool completely, about 30 minutes.

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

Loaf sugar
Forms the caramel base, providing sweetness and setting into a brittle sheet as it cools.
Lemon essence
Adds the bright lemon aroma and flavor to the caramel.

The step that matters

Stopping the boil at the snap stage. Sugar darkens quickly once it starts to color. Removing it from the heat at the right moment prevents bitter, burnt flavor and keeps the candy brittle rather than sticky.

“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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