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Dessert

Pumpkin Marmalade

A sweet preserve made from pumpkin, sugar, orange and lemon rinds, boiled until thick.

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 ↓

Pumpkin Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine diced pumpkin and granulated sugar in a large bowl.

  2. Let the mixture sit overnight.

Make the marmalade

  1. Grate the rinds of the oranges.

  2. Chop the cooked rinds of the lemons finely.

  3. Add the orange and lemon rinds to the pumpkin and sugar mixture.

  4. Boil the mixture for 1.5 hours, or until it thickens and becomes clear.

Jar and seal

  1. Pour the mixture into 14 jelly glasses.

  2. Seal the glasses with paraffin.

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. Pumpkin + orangetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Pumpkin + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Pumpkin
Forms the bulk of the marmalade and breaks down into a soft, spreadable body.
Granulated sugar
Draws water out of the pumpkin and helps the mixture thicken and set as it boils.
Oranges
Their grated rind adds fragrant citrus oils and a slightly bitter flavour.
Lemons
Their rind adds aroma and natural pectin, which helps the marmalade set.

The step that matters

Boil until it thickens and turns clear. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugar, so the pectin and starch can set the mixture. Stopping too early leaves it runny and prone to spoiling, while overcooking can make it dense and sticky.

Swap the pumpkin

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, lemon. 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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