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Dessert

Lemon Candy

A candied sugar confection made by boiling sugar and water, clarified with vinegar, optionally flavored with lemon or nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nuts and brazil nut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Lemon Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the sugar and water in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over low heat for 30 minutes.

  3. Clear the mixture with a little hot vinegar, removing any scum that rises.

Test and pour

  1. Test the mixture by lifting it with a spoon; when it forms threads that snap, it's ready.

  2. Before pouring, add lemon or nuts if desired.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered pan.

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. Nuts + brazil nuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Lemon + brazil nuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Loaf sugar
Forms the candy's body and sweetness as it cooks into a syrup that sets firm.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be cooked evenly into a syrup.
Hot vinegar
Acidity helps clear the syrup and keeps the sugar from crystallising too readily.

The step that matters

Testing the thread stage. Sugar syrup changes quickly as its temperature rises. Lifting it with a spoon and checking for threads that snap shows whether enough water has cooked off to set firm. Taking it off too early leaves a sticky candy, and too late makes it hard or bitter.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, nuts, brazil nut):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, nuts, brazil nut. 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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