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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from oranges, lemons, water, and sugar boiled to a jelly-like consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel the oranges and discard all the white pith.

  2. Cut the orange peel into shreds.

  3. Slice the oranges into thin pieces.

  4. Slice the lemons into small thin pieces.

  5. Combine the oranges, lemons, and water in a bowl.

  6. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Boil the mixture for 2 hours.

  2. Measure the mixture.

  3. Add an equal amount of sugar.

  4. Boil until the mixture reaches a jelly-like consistency.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Oranges
Provide the bulk of the flavour and the shredded peel that gives marmalade its texture.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour and helps the mixture set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with boiling, helps it thicken into a jelly-like set.

The step that matters

Boil until jelly-like. Sugar and acid help pectin from the citrus gel only when the mixture reaches the right concentration. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff or caramelise.

“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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