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
Grate the rind of a few lemons.
Cut the lemons in half.
Squeeze the juice from the lemons.
Strain the juice.
Boil the lemon skins as you would orange skins.
Scoop out the pulp and white part of the skins.
Cut half of the skins into thin chips or parings.
Pound the other half of the skins in a mortar.
Make the marmalade
Pound the sugar.
Pour the lemon juice over the sugar.
Stir the mixture.
Let it boil for 5 minutes.
Remove from heat.
Skim off any foam.
Add the parings and pounded skins.
Boil for another 5 minutes.
Add the grated peel.
Boil for 5 more minutes.
Remove from heat.
Finish and jar
Stir until half cold.
Transfer to jars.
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 juice, peel and pulp that give the marmalade its sour, aromatic flavour and pectin-rich body.
- Fine loaf sugar
- Sweetens the marmalade and, as it boils, thickens the juice into a preserve that keeps well.
The step that matters
Skimming off the foam. Foam that forms on boiling sugar and fruit contains impurities that can cloud the preserve and affect its texture, so it should be removed before the peel is added.
“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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