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Dessert

Orange Marmalade.

A preserved citrus spread made from oranges, lemons, water, and sugar.

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. Slice the oranges and lemons crosswise as thinly as possible and remove the seeds.

  2. Place the sliced fruit in a preserving kettle with the water and let it stand for 36 hours.

Cook and seal

  1. After 36 hours, boil the mixture for 2 hours.

  2. Add the sugar and boil for 1 hour longer.

  3. Pour the marmalade into jars and seal.

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 bitter peel and pulp that give marmalade its characteristic flavor and pectin.
Lemons
Add acidity and extra pectin to help the marmalade set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, at high concentration, helps it gel and keep.
Water
Softens the sliced fruit and draws out its pectin during soaking and boiling.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar and boiling. Sugar must be added only after the fruit has softened, because it can toughen peel that is not yet tender. Boiling then concentrates the mixture so it can gel properly when cooled.

“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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