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Dessert

Turkish Delight

A gelatin-based confection made with sugar, lemon, almonds, and walnuts, set in a tin and cut into blocks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Turkish Delight

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Dissolve gelatine in water over a slow fire.

  2. Add sifted sugar and boil for 20 minutes, stirring constantly until sticky.

  3. Stir in essence of lemon, lemon juice, almonds, and walnuts.

Set and finish

  1. Pour into a greased tin, leaving it 1 inch thick.

  2. Turn onto sugared paper.

  3. Cut into blocks.

  4. Dust with icing sugar.

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. Almond + walnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the boiled sugar syrup into a soft, sliceable jelly.
Sifted sugar
Forms the sweet bulk of the candy and, boiled, thickens into a sticky mass.
Almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavour that contrast with the soft jelly.
Walnuts
Add crunch and nutty flavour that contrast with the soft jelly.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar until sticky. Boiling the sugar and water concentrates the syrup so the candy sets firm enough to cut. Stirring constantly keeps the sugar from scorching and crystallising unevenly on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, almond, walnut):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, almond, walnut. 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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