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Dessert

Citron Preserves

Citron preserves made by slicing citron, boiling with alum, and cooking with raisins and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Citron Preserves

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the citron

  1. Cut the citron into thin slices.

  2. Boil in water with a small piece of alum until clear and tender.

  3. Rinse in cold water.

Cook the preserve

  1. Cook the citron until you can pierce it with a straw.

  2. Cook the juice down well; the raisins need not be cooked much.

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 + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. 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 bulk of the preserve and softens to a tender, translucent texture when cooked.
White sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens the cooking juice into a syrup.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and a chewy texture without needing long cooking.
Lemons
Add acidity and brightness that balance the sugar's sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the citron until you can pierce it with a straw. The citron must be fully softened so it becomes tender throughout. Undercooked slices stay firm and fibrous, while overcooking breaks them down and makes the preserve mushy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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