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Dessert

Turkish Paste

A gelatinous confection made with sugar, citrus juice, nuts, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Turkish Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the paste

  1. Soak the gelatine in 1 cup of water for 2 hours.

  2. In an agate or porcelain kettle, combine the sugar and ½ cup of water; mix well and boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and add the orange juice and rind, lemon juice and rind, brandy or sherry, and chopped nuts.

Set and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into pans that have been wet with cold water.

  2. Once cooled, cut into squares and roll in a mixture of powdered sugar and a little corn starch.

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. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Almond + corntop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the paste into a firm body that can be cut into squares.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the paste and, once boiled, helps it set with a firm, chewy texture.
Orange and lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma from the juice and grated rind.
Almonds or shellbarks
Adds crunch and nutty body throughout the paste.
Brandy or sherry
Adds a warm, aromatic note to the paste.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar and water for 20 minutes. Boiling concentrates the sugar syrup so the paste sets firm once cooled. Boiling too little leaves it soft and sticky, while boiling too long can make it hard and brittle.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, orange, brandy, almond, corn):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, brandy, almond, corn. 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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