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Preserve

Lemons, to Preserve

A method for preserving lemons in salt and syrup for long-term storage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Lemons, to Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Thinly peel the yellow rind off the lemons and cut out a piece at the blossom end. Remove the pulps and seeds.

  2. Rub the lemons with coarse sea salt and immerse them in cold water for 5 to 6 days.

  3. Boil the lemons in fresh saltwater for 20 minutes.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Prepare a syrup with 1 pound loaf sugar and 1 quart water, skimming it well.

  2. Add the lemons to the syrup and boil for 5 to 6 minutes each day for 4 consecutive days.

  3. Place the lemons in a jar, ensuring they are completely covered with syrup, and let them stand for 6 weeks.

  4. Make a thick syrup with the best refined sugar and water, then gently boil the lemons in it for 10 minutes.

  5. Set the lemons aside and boil them again at short intervals until they look plump and clear.

Store and seal

  1. Transfer the lemons to jars or glasses and pour the cold syrup over them.

  2. Cover with brandy paper and seal with bladders or leather.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Fine lemons
Provide the rind and flesh that become tender and flavourful as they preserve.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and begins the preserving process before the lemons are cooked.
Loaf sugar
Forms a concentrated syrup that preserves the lemons and sweetens the rind.
Best refined sugar
Makes the thick final syrup that gives the finished lemons their sweetness and clarity.

The step that matters

Repeated boiling in syrup. Boiling in increasingly concentrated syrup softens the rind and draws sugar into the fruit gradually. Boiling too hard or too briefly can break the skin or leave the lemons under-preserved.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup. 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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