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Dessert

Citron Preserves

A preserve made by soaking citron rind, layering with grape leaves, scalding, boiling in ginger water with sugar, and seasoning with mace and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Citron Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the citron

  1. Soak the citron rind in salt water for 24 hours.

  2. Then soak the citron rind in clear water, changing it several times a day.

  3. In a kettle, layer grape leaves and citron rind, starting with grape leaves.

  4. Sprinkle a little alum on each layer.

  5. Scald the layers well.

  6. Then scald again in clear water to remove the alum taste.

Cook in syrup

  1. Boil the citron in ginger water, using 1¼ pounds of sugar and 1 pint of water for every pound of fruit.

  2. Add mace and cinnamon to taste.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Grape + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,164 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 rind
Forms the main body of the preserve and absorbs the syrup as it cooks.
Alum
Firms the rind so it keeps its shape during scalding and boiling.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as a thick syrup, helps preserve the fruit.
Grape leaves
Layered with the rind during scalding, adding a subtle flavour and helping keep the fruit firm.

The step that matters

Scalding the layers well. Alum firms the rind only in the right amount of heat and time; too little scalding leaves it tough, while the second scald in clear water is needed to rinse out the alum taste before the fruit is sweetened.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grape, ginger, sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grape, ginger, sugar, cinnamon. 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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