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Dessert

Citron Preserves

Citron preserves made by salting, boiling, and sugaring citron rind and pulp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Citron Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the citron

  1. Pare the dark rind from the citron and scrape out the soft pulp.

  2. Cut the citron into desired shapes and soak in salt water for three days.

  3. Rinse the salt off and boil in alum water until the rind can be pierced easily.

  4. Soak in clear water for 2-3 hours, changing the water occasionally.

Make the syrup and preserve

  1. For every pound of fruit, use 2 pounds of sugar; make a syrup with half the sugar.

  2. Boil the citron in the syrup until it becomes transparent.

  3. After 2-3 days, remove the syrup and boil it with the remaining sugar, then pour over the citron.

  4. If any small white spots appear, boil the mixture for a few minutes.

  5. Optionally, add a few pieces of white race ginger.

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 + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Citron
Is the fruit being preserved; its rind becomes tender and translucent through soaking and syrup cooking.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, at high concentration in the syrup, helps draw out moisture and preserve the fruit.
Coarse sea salt
Firms the rind during the initial salt soak, preparing it for later alum and syrup treatment.
Alum water
Firms and crisps the rind so it holds its shape during long boiling.

The step that matters

Boiling in the alum water until the rind can be pierced easily. Alum firms the rind, and boiling must stop once it is just pierceable; overboiling can make it fall apart, while underboiling leaves it too firm to absorb syrup.

“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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