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Dessert

Turkish Delight

A gelatin-based sweet made with sugar, lemon and orange juice, walnuts, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Turkish Delight

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in the hot water.

  2. In a saucepan, bring the sugar and ½ cup cold water to a boil.

  3. Add the dissolved gelatine and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the juices of the orange and lemon, and boil for another 10 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat and add the chopped walnuts.

Set and finish

  1. Wet shallow pans with cold water and pour the mixture in.

  2. Let it stand overnight.

  3. Cut into cubes and roll in powdered sugar.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  3. Orange + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Granulated sugar
Forms the bulk of the candy and provides its sweetness and body once cooked.
Gelatine
Sets the boiled syrup into a firm, sliceable, jelly-like texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the candy.
Orange juice and rind
Adds citrus aroma and flavour along with additional liquid to the syrup.
Walnuts
Add crunch and nutty flavour contrasting with the soft, chewy candy.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar and gelatine for the full time. Boiling concentrates the sugar syrup and dissolves the gelatine fully, so the mixture sets firm rather than soft or sticky once cooled. Under-boiling leaves too much water, which weakens the set.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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