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Dessert

Turkish Delight

A gelatinous confection made from sugar, water, and lemon essence, flavored with tartaric acid and colored with carmine.

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

Turkish Delight

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. In a pot, combine sugar and boiling water, then boil for 10 minutes while stirring continuously.

  3. Add tartaric acid and carmine, if desired.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered tins.

  2. Once firm, cut into pieces and dust with 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. 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

Leaf gelatine
Sets the syrup into a firm, tender gel that holds its shape when cut.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and body, and thickens into a chewy candy as the syrup cools.
Tartaric acid
Adds a sharp tang and helps keep the sugar syrup from turning grainy.
Lemon essence
Adds a bright citrus aroma that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar syrup for 10 minutes while stirring continuously. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugar, which is what allows the candy to set firm as it cools. Constant stirring keeps the sugar dissolved and prevents scorching or crystals forming in the syrup.

“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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