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Dessert

Turkish Delight

A gelatinous sweet made with sugar, lemon, orange, and gelatin, set in a tin and cut into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 Delight

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 2 hours.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water; bring to a boil.

  2. Add the soaked gelatine and simmer slowly for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice and orange juice and rind.

Set and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a square tin rinsed in cold water.

  2. Allow to set for about a week, then cut into squares and dredge in icing sugar.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Gelatine
Sets the syrup into a firm, sliceable, gel-like texture as it cools.
Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness and, dissolved in the syrup, helps give the set candy its body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the sugar.
Orange juice and rind
Adds citrus aroma and flavour, with juice contributing acidity and moisture.

The step that matters

Simmering the gelatine syrup. Gelatine must be fully dissolved and the syrup cooked long enough to set firmly. Simmering slowly for the full time, rather than boiling hard, helps the gel form evenly without scorching the sugar. Adding the citrus after removing from heat protects its flavour.

“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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