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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from sliced oranges, sugar, water, and lemon juice.

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. Wash the oranges.

  2. Cut the oranges crosswise into thin slices.

  3. Soak the slices in cold water for 24 hours.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Cook the soaked oranges in the same water until the peel is tender.

  2. Measure the mixture. Add an equal amount of sugar.

  3. Cook until the juice becomes jellied.

  4. Add the juice of 6 lemons.

  5. Cook for an additional 15 minutes.

Jar and seal

  1. When cool, transfer to cans or glasses. Seal airtight.

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 body and characteristic flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with the fruit pectin, helps it set into a jelly.
Lemons
Add acidity and extra juice, which helps the marmalade set and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook until the juice becomes jellied. Sugar and natural fruit pectin must reach a gel point together. Undercooking leaves the marmalade runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dark.

“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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