Skip to main content
Dessert

Turkish Paste

A gelatinous paste made with sugar, citrus juices, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Turkish Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in enough water to cover for 2 hours.

Make the paste

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sugar and water, and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the soaked gelatine and boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice, orange juice, grated orange rind, and chopped almonds.

  4. Pour the mixture into a wet pan and let it cool in cold water.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 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 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

Gelatine
Sets the mixture into a firm, sliceable paste as it cools.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, when boiled, body and a thick texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the sugar.
Orange juice
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity to the paste.
Almonds
Add texture and nutty flavour throughout the paste.

The step that matters

Boiling the gelatine for 20 minutes. Gelatine must be fully dissolved into the boiling syrup so it sets evenly. Boiling for the full time also thickens the sugar syrup, which affects how firmly the paste sets as it cools.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chickpeafits less well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, orange. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes