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
Pare the oranges very thin and cut them in half, saving the juice in a clean vessel.
Soak the half-oranges in water overnight, then boil them until tender, changing the water to remove bitterness.
Dry the oranges, remove seeds and strings, and pound the pulp finely.
Make the marmalade
For every pound of pulp, add a pound of double-refined sugar and boil until almost candy height.
Strain the juice from the oranges and lemons, measure its weight, and add the same weight of double-refined sugar.
Pour the juice and sugar mixture into the pulp and sugar, and boil until it reaches a jelly consistency.
Store
Store in covered glasses for a lasting sweet treat.
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.
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Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,634 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Seville oranges
- Provide the bitter peel, pulp and pectin that give marmalade its flavour and set.
- Lemons
- Add extra acidity and pectin to help the marmalade set.
- Double-refined sugar
- Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken and set as it boils.
The step that matters
Boiling to a jelly consistency. Sugar and pectin set only at a sufficiently high concentration and temperature, so underboiling leaves the marmalade runny, while overboiling can make it stiff or caramelise the sugar.
“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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