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Dessert

Citron Preserves

A preserve made from citron pieces, sugar, raisins, lemon slices, and weak alum water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Citron Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the citron

  1. Boil the citron pieces in weak alum water until soft.

  2. Drain the water.

Make the preserve

  1. Add 1 pound of sugar for each pound of citron.

  2. For every 5 pounds of preserve, add 1 pound of raisins and 1 sliced lemon.

  3. Dissolve the sugar in the mixture.

  4. Add the fruit.

  5. Simmer slowly for 1 hour.

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 + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. 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

Citron
Forms the bulk of the preserve and, once softened, becomes tender enough to hold its shape in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, at this concentration, helps preserve the fruit and thicken the syrup.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 1 hour. Simmering gently rather than boiling hard lets the citron become translucent and tender while the syrup thickens evenly, without scorching the sugar on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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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