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Dessert

Citron Preserves

A preserve made from citron, sugar, water, and lemon, cooked until clear.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Citron Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the citron and remove the seeds, then cut it into small pieces.

  2. Combine the citron and sugar in a jar.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Cook and can

  1. In the morning, pour the mixture into a preserving kettle.

  2. Add the water to the kettle.

  3. Cook until the mixture is clear.

  4. Just before removing from heat, add the thinly sliced lemon.

  5. Let the mixture cool.

  6. Can the preserves.

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 body of the preserves and becomes tender and translucent as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserves and draws moisture from the citron, helping it turn clear and syrupy.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright flavor that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture is clear. Cooking long enough softens the citron and dissolves sugar into a syrup that thickens and clears. Stopping too early leaves the pieces firm and cloudy, while overcooking can make the syrup too thick or the fruit overly soft.

“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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