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 in the stalk part of the fruit, the size of a shilling, and scrape out the pulp without cutting the rind.
Tie each fruit separately in muslin and soak them in spring water for two days, changing the water twice a day.
Boil the fruit tender on a slow fire during the last soaking.
Make the syrup
For every pound of fruit, weigh two pounds of double refined sugar and one pint of water.
Boil the sugar and water together with the juice of the orange to make a syrup.
Clarify and skim the syrup.
Let the syrup cool.
Boil the fruit in the syrup for half an hour.
If the fruit is not clear, repeat boiling daily until done.
Make the apple jelly
Pare and core some green pippins.
Boil the green pippins in water until the water tastes strong of them.
Gently press the green pippins with the back of a spoon.
Strain the water through a jelly-bag until clear.
Add a pound of double refined sugar and the peel and juice of a lemon for every pint of liquid.
Boil this mixture to a strong syrup.
Pot and cover
Drain the syrup from the fruit.
Place each orange hole-side up in a jar.
Pour the apple jelly over the fruit.
Process the bits cut out from the fruit in the same way.
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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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- The fruit is the preserved item, its rind holding its shape while it is boiled in syrup.
- Double refined sugar
- Sweetens the preserve and, once boiled to a syrup, draws water out of the fruit to preserve it.
- Green pippins
- Their natural pectin, drawn out by boiling and straining, sets the apple jelly that surrounds the fruit.
- Spring water
- Soaks out the bitterness from the fruit and, as the liquid for boiling, carries the syrup.
The step that matters
Boiling the fruit in the syrup. Boiling too hard or too long can break down the rind and make it ragged, while too little heat leaves it tough. Repeated gentle boiling over days lets sugar slowly replace the water in the fruit so it becomes clear and keeps well.
“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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