Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓
To Preserve Oranges or Lemons in Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Cut a hole the size of a shilling in the stalk of each orange or lemon and scrape out the pulp without cutting the rind.
Tie each fruit in muslin and soak in spring water for 2 days, changing the water twice a day.
Boil the fruit in water until tender over a slow fire.
Make the syrup and preserve the fruit
Boil 1 pint of water with the juice of the oranges and 2 pounds of sugar until it forms a syrup.
Clarify the syrup and let it cool.
Boil the fruit in the syrup for half an hour, repeating daily until clear.
Make the apple jelly
Boil the green pippins in water until the water tastes strong of the apples.
Strain the boiled pippins through a jelly bag until clear.
Add 1 pound of sugar and the lemon peel and juice to every pint of strained apple water.
Boil the mixture to a strong syrup.
Pack and cover
Drain the syrup from the fruit.
Place each orange or lemon hole-up in a jar.
Pour the apple jelly over them.
Cover with brandy paper.
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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Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,634 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Orange + appletop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,230 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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
- Oranges or lemons
- Provide the aromatic peel and juice, and the fruit that is preserved whole.
- Double-refined sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and syrup and helps preserve them by drawing out water.
- Green pippins (apples)
- Supply pectin and flavour to make the clear, set apple jelly.
The step that matters
Boiling the fruit in the syrup repeatedly until clear. Peel is slowly softened and sugar gradually replaces water in its tissue; boiling too hard or too briefly can toughen or leave it cloudy and unpreserved.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, sugar, lemon):
- Limefits better
- Vanillafits better
- Blueberryfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“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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