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Dessert

Turkish Delight

A gelatinous candy made with sugar, water, and orange rind and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Turkish Delight

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ cup of cold water for 2 hours.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in ½ cup of cold water and bring to a boil.

Cook and flavor

  1. Add the soaked gelatine to the boiling sugar mixture and cook steadily for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and flavor with the rind and juice of the orange.

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

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 syrup into a firm, jelly-like texture as it cools.
Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness and body, and helps give the candy its chewy, soft-set texture.
Orange
Adds aromatic citrus flavor from the rind and juice.

The step that matters

Cook steadily for 20 minutes after adding the gelatine. Gelatine must be fully dissolved and the sugar syrup cooked long enough to concentrate and set properly. Too little cooking leaves the candy soft and runny, while overheating can make it tough or too stiff.

“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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