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Dessert

Turkish Delight

A gelatinous confection made from orange and lemon zest, juice, and sugar, rolled in icing sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Delight

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Soak gelatin in ½ cup water until dissolved.

  2. In a pot, combine orange rind, orange juice, lemon rind, lemon juice, granulated sugar, and ½ cup water.

  3. Boil the mixture for ten minutes.

  4. Add the dissolved gelatin to the pot and stir well.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a flat dish and let it set overnight.

  2. Once set, cut into squares and roll 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Gelatine
Sets the boiled sugar mixture into a soft, sliceable jelly.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the candy and helps give it a firm, chewy body as it sets.
Orange juice
Adds bright citrus flavour and acidity to balance the sweetness.
Lemon juice
Adds tart acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Adding the dissolved gelatin. Gelatin must be fully dissolved before it goes into the hot syrup, and it should be stirred in well so it distributes evenly. Lumps or uneven mixing leave weak or patchy spots in the set jelly.

“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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