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Lemon Marmalade

A preserved lemon and sugar mixture boiled and strained into jars.

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

Prepare the lemons

  1. Wash the lemons and pare the skin very thinly, cutting it into slender chips.

  2. Boil the chips in a small pan with 2 ½ cups of water for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the white part from the lemons and roughly chop the pulp.

  4. Add the pulp to a preserving pan with the remaining water and boil for 1 hour, stirring frequently.

  5. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag without pressure.

Make the marmalade

  1. Measure the liquid and add 1 lb of sugar for each cup of liquid.

  2. Boil the mixture in the preserving pan for 30 minutes.

  3. Pour into jars and cover for storage.

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 peel and pulp, which supply the bitter flavor and natural pectin that help the marmalade set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled down, helps it thicken and set and preserves it.

The step that matters

Boiling with the sugar. Sugar must be added to a measured liquid and boiled long enough to reach the setting point. Too little boiling leaves the marmalade runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and darken its flavor.

“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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