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Dessert

Lemon Marmalade

A preserved citrus spread made from lemon peel, pulp, juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓

Lemon Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peel

  1. Peel the lemons.

  2. Cover the yellow peelings with water and boil until tender.

  3. Drain and let cool, then shred the peelings finely.

Prepare the pulp

  1. Halve the peeled lemons and press out the juice and pulp.

  2. Cover the remaining white pulp with 3 pints of cold water and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the liquid.

Make the marmalade

  1. Add it to the juice and pulp along with the shredded peel and boil all together.

  2. Add the heated sugar and boil down to the desired consistency.

  3. While hot, place the mixture in small jars or marmalade pots.

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

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

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

Lemons
Supply the bitter-sour flavour, aroma from the peel, and pectin from the peel and pith that helps it set.
Sugar
Sweetens and preserves the marmalade, and when boiled down it thickens into a spreadable set.

The step that matters

Boil down to the desired consistency. Sugar and pectin only form a gel at the right concentration. Stopping too early leaves the marmalade runny, while boiling too long makes it stiff and can caramelise the sugar.

“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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