Skip to main content

Preserved Pumpkin

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lime and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,289 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Preserved Pumpkin

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the pumpkin into very thin slices.

  2. Soak the slices in lime-water for 24 hours.

  3. Wash the slices well in cold water and wipe them dry.

  4. Prepare a clarified syrup by dissolving sugar in water.

  5. Add lemon juice to the syrup to taste.

  6. Simmer the pumpkin slices in the syrup over low heat for 24 hours without stirring.

  7. Once done, the slices will be crisp and transparent.

  8. Transfer the slices to broad stone or queensware pots and cover with brandy 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. Lime + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pumpkin + limetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Pumpkin + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Pumpkin + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lime, sugar, lemon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lime, sugar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

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