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Dessert

Lemon Marmalade

A preserved lemon product made by boiling lemon chips, pulp, sugar, and water until it jellies.

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. Scrub and wash the lemons, then place them in a saucepan of cold water.

  2. Boil for 1 hour or until soft enough to pierce with a pin.

  3. Change the water twice, always replacing it with boiling water.

  4. Strain the water into a basin, cut the lemons into quarters.

Make the marmalade

  1. For every pound of pulp and chips, use 1 pint of the strained water and 2 lbs. of sugar.

  2. In a preserving pan, combine sugar and water, boil for 20-30 minutes while stirring and removing scum.

  3. Once the syrup cools slightly, add the lemon chips and pulp.

  4. Bring to a boil and cook gently for about 30 minutes until it jellies.

  5. Pour into jars and cover.

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 chips and pulp, along with pectin-rich peel and pith that help the marmalade set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled with the fruit, helps it thicken and set.
Water
Softens the lemons during boiling and forms the syrup base for the marmalade.

The step that matters

Cook until it jellies. Marmalade sets when pectin, acid and sugar reach the right balance at a boil. Undercooking leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dark.

“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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