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Dessert

Preserve Citron

A preserve made by boiling citron rind with sugar and lemon, simmered 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 ↓

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 and finish

  1. In a separate pot, combine the sugar and lemon, and boil until it becomes a syrup, skimming well.

  2. Add the syrup to the boiled citron and 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
Forms the bulk of the preserve, its rind becoming tender and absorbing the syrup as it cooks.
Sugar
Makes the syrup that sweetens the rind and, as it thickens, helps preserve the finished citron.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness to the syrup, balancing the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Skimming the syrup. Sugar syrup that is boiled without skimming can carry foam and impurities into the preserve, which cloud its look and taste. Removing them as they rise keeps the syrup clear and clean-flavoured.

“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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