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Dessert

Dundee Marmalade

A citrus marmalade made from oranges, lemon juice, water, and sugar, cooked until the rind is tender and jelly-like.

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 ↓

Dundee Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the oranges and remove the seeds.

  2. Add the juice of the lemons and enough water to make 7 pints.

  3. Let the mixture sit in a stone jar overnight.

Cook

  1. Cook the oranges until the rind is tender.

  2. Add the granulated sugar and boil until the rind is clear and begins to jelly.

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
Rind and pulp supply the bitter flavour and the pectin that helps the marmalade set.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled, helps it thicken and set as it cools.
Lemons
Their juice adds acidity, which brightens the flavour and supports setting.

The step that matters

Boil until the rind is clear and begins to jelly. Sugar must be added to the softened peel and boiled to the right point. Too little boiling leaves the marmalade runny, while overboiling can darken it and make it taste caramelised.

“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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