Skip to main content
Dessert

Turkish Delight

A gelatin-based candy flavored with orange and lemon, rolled in confectioner's sugar.

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

Why it works: Orange and lemon 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

Prepare

  1. Soak gelatine in cold water until soft.

  2. In a pot, combine soaked gelatine and granulated sugar; boil for 20 minutes.

Flavour and set

  1. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla, orange juice, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  2. Pour mixture into a square dish and let it cool.

  3. Once cooled, cut into squares and roll in confectioner's 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 sugar syrup into a soft, sliceable jelly.
Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness and, once boiled, the body of the jelly.
Orange juice
Adds citrus acidity and fragrance to the sweet base.
Lemon juice and rind
Adds sharp acidity and aromatic oils that brighten the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the gelatine and sugar for 20 minutes. Boiling concentrates the sugar syrup so the mixture sets firm enough to cut. Too little boiling leaves it soft, and the gelatine must be fully dissolved before the mixture cools.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vanilla, 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