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To Preserve Oranges or Lemons in Jelly

A method for preserving oranges or lemons by boiling them in a sugar syrup and storing them in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

  1. Cut a hole in the stalk of each orange or lemon, the size of a shilling, and scrape out the pulp without cutting the rind.

  2. Tie each fruit in muslin and soak in spring water for two days, changing the water twice a day.

  3. Boil the fruit in water until tender over a slow fire.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 1 pint of water with the juice of the orange and 2 pounds of sugar until it forms a syrup.

  2. Clarify the syrup and let it cool.

  3. Boil the fruit in the syrup for half an hour, repeating daily until clear.

Make the apple jelly and pack

  1. Boil green pippins in water until the flavor is strong.

  2. Strain the water through a jelly bag until clear.

  3. Add 1 pound of sugar and the peel and juice of a lemon to the strained water, and boil to a strong syrup.

  4. Drain the syrup from the fruit.

  5. Place the oranges or lemons hole-side up in a jar.

  6. Pour the apple jelly over them.

  7. Cover with brandy paper.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and lemon 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

Double-refined sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, when boiled to a syrup, preserves it and sets it clear.
Green pippins
Provide pectin, which helps the strained liquid set into a jelly.
Oranges or lemons
Provide the main fruit, whose peel is cooked until tender and candied in syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the fruit in the syrup until clear. The fruit must be simmered gently and repeated daily so sugar slowly replaces the water in the peel. Rushing this leaves the rind opaque and tough instead of clear and tender.

“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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