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Dessert

Preserved Citron

Preserved citron is citron melon preserved in a sugar syrup with ginger and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Preserved Citron

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the citron

  1. Pare the citron melons.

  2. Cut the parred citron melons into half-moon shaped pieces, about ½ inch thick.

  3. Boil the citron pieces in soda water until tender.

  4. Skim the citron pieces out of the soda water.

  5. Lay the citron pieces in weak alum water for 3 hours.

  6. Transfer the citron pieces to cold water for 1 hour.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine 1 quart of water and 4 pounds of sugar in a pot.

  2. Boil the syrup.

  3. Remove the scum from the syrup.

  4. Add the citron pieces to the clear syrup.

  5. Let the citron soak until the sugar penetrates thoroughly.

Pack and seal

  1. Pack the citron pieces in jars.

  2. Boil the syrup until it is ropy.

  3. Pour the ropy syrup into the jars.

  4. Flavor the syrup with extract of ginger.

  5. Add 1 tablespoon of extract of lemon peel to each quart jar.

  6. Seal the jars immediately with paper wet in egg.

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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Melon + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Melon + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 preserved fruit itself, becoming tender and translucent as it candies.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, draws out water to help preserve it.
Alum
Firms the rind so the citron keeps some texture after long cooking and soaking.
Extract of ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until it is ropy. Boiling concentrates the sugar so the syrup is thick enough to preserve the fruit. Undercooked syrup stays thin and can spoil, while overcooked syrup can turn sticky or crystallize.

Swap the melon

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Melonthe original

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

More preserved citron recipes

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