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Dessert

Lemon Marmalade

A preserved citrus spread made from lemons, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Remove the thin rind and white pith from the lemons.

  2. Cut the lemons in half, extract the seeds and squeeze the juice.

  3. Chop the pulp and thin rind very finely.

Make the syrup

  1. Break the sugar into fine pieces.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in ½ cup of water that has boiled with the pith for a few minutes.

Cook and jar

  1. Add the juice, chopped rind and pulp to the syrup once it is thick.

  2. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

  3. Transfer the marmalade to a wide-mouthed jar.

  4. Seal it when cool.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 sharp acidity and aroma, while the pith and seeds supply pectin that helps the marmalade set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it concentrates during boiling, helps it thicken and set.

The step that matters

Adding the fruit to the syrup and boiling. The fruit is added once the syrup is thick, and the mixture must then boil long enough for the sugar to concentrate and the lemon pectin to set the marmalade. Boiling too briefly can leave it runny.

“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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