Skip to main content
Dessert

Candied Citron Peel

Candied citron peel is preserved by soaking, boiling, sugaring, and drying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Candied Citron Peel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peel

  1. Soak the citron peel in brine for 1 week, changing the water daily.

  2. Rinse the peel and soak it in fresh water overnight.

  3. Cut the peel into quarters and scrape out the pulp.

  4. Boil the peel in alum water until tender, then rinse again.

Candy the peel

  1. Combine the sugar with the peel and cook until soft.

  2. Dry the candied peel in the sun, allowing it to absorb all the syrup.

  3. Optionally, flavor the syrup with lemon.

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 peel
Forms the main body of the sweet, chewy candy as it absorbs the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the peel and, as a syrup, preserves it by replacing its water.
Alum
Firms the peel's tissue during boiling so it stays intact while becoming tender.

The step that matters

Cook the peel in sugar slowly until soft. Gentle cooking lets the syrup penetrate the peel gradually, so it becomes translucent and evenly sweet. Rushing with high heat can crystallise the outside while the inside stays dry and tough.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes