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Dessert

Lemon Marmalade

A sweet preserve made from boiled lemons, water, and sugar.

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

Cook the lemons

  1. Boil the lemons in water until they are clear and sink to the bottom.

  2. Tie the seeds in a muslin bag.

  3. Add the bag of seeds to the pot.

Thicken and store

  1. Add the sugar and boil until the mixture thickens when tested on a saucer.

  2. Let cool before storing.

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 bitter peel flavor and acidity, and their seeds release pectin that helps the mixture set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as the mixture cooks down, helps it thicken and keep.

The step that matters

Testing the thickness on a saucer. Pectin and sugar need enough boiling to reach a set. Stopping too early leaves a runny marmalade, while boiling too long makes it stiff and dense.

“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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