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Dessert

Turkish Delight

A gelatinous candy made with sugar, water, lemon and orange zest, rolled in powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 Delight

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ cup of water.

  2. In a pot, combine 2 cups of white sugar and 1 cup of water, and bring to a boil.

  3. Once boiling, add the soaked gelatine and boil for 20 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the grated rind and juice of the lemon and orange.

  5. Pour the mixture into a shallow dish that has been dipped in water.

Set and serve

  1. Allow to set until jellied.

  2. Cut into squares.

  3. Roll in powdered sugar.

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

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

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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 liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly with a chewy texture.
White sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps give it a smooth, tender body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavour.
Orange juice
Adds fruity aroma and acidity that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil for 20 minutes. Boiling the sugar syrup concentrates it and drives off water, so the jelly sets firm enough to cut. Too little boiling leaves it soft and sticky, while overboiling can make it tough.

“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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