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Dessert

English Turkish Delight

A gelatinous sweet made with sugar, water, orange juice, lemon rind, and gelatin, dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

English Turkish Delight

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve sugar in ½ cup of water and boil until clear.

  2. Dissolve gelatine in ½ cup of clear water and add to the boiling sugar mixture.

Cook and set

  1. Boil for 20 minutes in a double boiler, adding orange juice and grated lemon rind after 15 minutes.

  2. Boil for an additional 5 minutes, then strain into lightly greased shallow pans.

  3. Let harden, dust with powdered sugar, and cut into desired shapes.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

  3. 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, as it dissolves and cooks, forms the body of the candy.
Gelatine
Sets the boiled syrup into a firm, sliceable, tender jelly as it cools.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and citrus flavour that balances the sweetness.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic citrus oils for fragrance and flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the gelatine to the boiling sugar. Gelatine must be fully dissolved before it joins the hot syrup, or it can clump and leave a grainy or uneven set. Keeping the mixture at a steady boil dissolves the sugar completely, which helps the candy set clear and smooth.

“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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