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 ↓
Marmalade, Lemon
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the lemons
Slice the lemons very thinly and remove the seeds.
Add the sliced lemons to 3 pints of cold water and let it stand for 24 hours.
Cook and rest
Boil the lemons and water until the lemons are tender.
Pour the mixture into an earthen bowl and let it stand overnight.
Make the marmalade
Weigh the lemon and water mixture, then add 1.5 pounds of sugar for each pound of mixture.
Boil together until the syrup jellies; test by placing a little on a cold plate.
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.
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 bulk of the fruit, along with pectin-rich peel and pith, and the bitter-sour flavor.
- Preserving or loaf sugar
- Sweetens the marmalade and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps it set into a jelly.
The step that matters
Testing for the set. Syrup can go past the jelly point and turn stiff, or stop short and stay runny. A small spoonful chilled on a cold plate shows whether it wrinkles when pushed, which is a reliable sign it has reached the setting point.
“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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