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Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from orange and lemon peels, fruit, 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. Peel the oranges and lemons very thinly, avoiding the white pith.

  2. Place the peels in a pan.

  3. Cover with cold water.

  4. Boil gently until tender.

  5. Squeeze out the juice from the peels.

  6. Set the juice aside.

  7. Cut the remaining oranges into small pieces.

  8. Boil the orange pieces in a small amount of water until very soft.

  9. Press the boiled oranges through a colander.

  10. Combine the pressed oranges with the reserved juice and strained water from the peels.

  11. Cut the peels into fine shreds.

  12. Add the shredded peels to the mixture.

Cook and set

  1. Boil the mixture for one hour.

  2. Add an equal weight of sugar.

  3. Boil slowly.

  4. Skim for 45 minutes.

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
Peel and pulp supply the bitter aroma, pectin and body that give the marmalade its set.
Lemons
Peel and juice add acidity and extra pectin to help the marmalade set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, at high concentration, helps it gel and keep.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar. Sugar should be added only after the peel is fully tender, because it hardens the peel and stops it softening. Boil slowly once it is in, since the sugar must dissolve fully and the mixture must reach a gel without scorching on the base of the pan.

“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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