Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Lemon Harmalade
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Peel the lemons and remove all seeds.
Boil the lemon peel until very soft.
Make the marmalade
Add the lemon juice and pulp, along with 1 pound of sugar for every pound of lemons.
Boil the mixture until it thickens.
Bottle the lemon marmalade.
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.
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon and sugar 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
- Lemons
- Provide the peel, juice and pulp that form the marmalade's body and bitter-citrus flavour.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves and thickens, helps set the marmalade.
The step that matters
Boil the mixture until it thickens. Sugar and pectin from the lemons must reach a high enough concentration to set. Stopping too early leaves a runny marmalade, while boiling too long can darken and over-thicken it.
“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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