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Dessert

To Preserve Citron

A preserve made by boiling citron rind with sugar and lemon, then simmering together for an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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 ↓

To Preserve Citron

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the citron

  1. Pare and cut open the citron, removing all except the rind.

  2. Boil the citron until soft.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and lemon in a separate pot.

  2. Boil until it becomes a syrup, skimming well.

Finish the preserves

  1. Add the syrup to the boiled citron.

  2. Boil together for one hour.

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 + 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

Citron
Provides the rind, which becomes the tender, chewy body of the preserves.
Sugar
Forms the syrup that sweetens the fruit and thickens as it cooks, helping preserve it.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Skimming the syrup. Sugar boiled with fruit foams and forms scum as impurities rise to the surface. Skimming removes this, keeping the syrup clear and giving the preserves a clean flavor and appearance.

“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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