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 Marmalade
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the lemons
Boil the lemons in enough water to cover them for 2 hours, replacing the water with fresh boiling water once or twice.
Drain the lemons and cut them into thin slices, removing all the seeds.
Weigh the fruit and use 2 pounds of sugar and 1 pint of the last boiling water for every pound of fruit.
Cook the marmalade
Boil the sugar and water together for 10 minutes.
Add the lemon pulp and boil together for 30 minutes.
Jar and seal
Pour the marmalade into jars, let it cool, and cover with brandied paper and then with bladder or tissue paper brushed with egg white or dissolved gum.
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.
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 clear lemons
- Provide the fruit, peel and pulp that form the body and bitter flavour of the marmalade.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the marmalade and, as it thickens during boiling, helps it set and keep.
The step that matters
Boiling the lemons before slicing. Long boiling in several changes of water softens the thick peel and mellows its bitterness. Skipping or shortening this leaves tough, harsh peel in the finished marmalade.
“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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