Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Orange Marmalade
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Cut the Seville oranges in half.
Squeeze the juice through a sieve into a bowl.
Boil the rinds in plenty of water until soft enough to run a straw through them.
Drain the rinds.
Steep the rinds in cold water for three hours.
Drain the rinds again.
Scrape out all the white pith.
Shred the rinds into thin strips.
Cook and pot
Boil the sugar until it reaches the feather stage.
Add the rinds and juice to the sugar.
Boil for twenty minutes over a brisk fire, stirring continuously.
Pour the mixture into pots and cover when cool.
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 + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,212 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 orange rind
- Provides the bitter peel flavour and the pectin-rich body that helps the marmalade set.
- Seville orange juice
- Adds acidity and liquid, which helps the marmalade set and balances the sweetness.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled, helps it thicken and set.
The step that matters
Boiling with the sugar for twenty minutes. The mixture must be stirred constantly over a brisk fire, because sugar and fruit scorch easily on the base of the pan. Boiling also drives off water so the pectin and sugar can gel as it cools.
“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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