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To Preserve Oranges or Lemons in Jelly

A method of preserving oranges or lemons by soaking, boiling, and encasing them in a sugar syrup and apple jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Scrape out the pulp without cutting the rind.

  2. Tie each fruit in muslin.

  3. Soak the muslin-wrapped fruit in spring water for 2 days, changing the water twice a day.

  4. Boil the fruit in fresh water on a slow fire until tender.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine 2 pounds of double-refined sugar, 1 pint of water, and the juice of the orange in a pot. Boil the mixture until it forms a syrup.

  2. Clarify the syrup and let it cool.

  3. Boil the fruit in the syrup for half an hour.

  4. If the syrup is not clear, repeat the boiling daily until clear.

Make the apple jelly

  1. Boil green pippins in water until the water tastes strong of apples.

  2. Strain the boiled pippins through a jelly bag until clear.

  3. Add 1 pound of double-refined sugar, the peel, and juice of a lemon to the strained water. Boil the mixture to a strong syrup.

Pot and seal

  1. Drain the syrup from the fruit.

  2. Place each orange or lemon hole-up in a jar. Pour the apple jelly over the fruit in the jar.

  3. 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

Oranges or lemons
Provide the fruit that is softened and preserved whole in the syrup.
Double-refined sugar
Sweetens and, as it thickens into syrup, preserves the fruit and sets the jelly.
Green pippins
Supply natural pectin and apple flavour that help the apple jelly set.

The step that matters

Clarifying and repeated boiling of the syrup. Cloudy syrup means impurities remain in the sugar solution. Clarifying removes them, and repeated boiling until clear keeps the preserve bright and stable.

“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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