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 ↓
Marmalade
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Boil the oranges until tender, changing the water 2 or 3 times.
Drain the oranges, remove the rind, and take out the pips from the pulp.
Weigh the pulp and add ½ lb of loaf sugar and ½ pint of the water used for boiling.
Make the marmalade
Boil the sugar and water together for 10 minutes.
Add the pulp and boil for another 10 minutes.
Stir in the orange peel strips and boil the marmalade for an additional 10 minutes.
Jar and seal
Pour the marmalade into jars and let it cool.
Cover the jars with bladders or tissue paper brushed with egg white.
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
- Orange pulp
- Provides the fruit body, bitterness and natural pectin that help the marmalade set.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled, helps it thicken and set.
- Orange peel
- Adds bitter aroma and chewy texture to the finished marmalade.
The step that matters
Boil the marmalade with the pulp and sugar. Sugar and pulp must be boiled long enough for the mixture to reach a concentration where it gels as it cools. Underboiling leaves a runny preserve that may spoil, while overboiling can darken and toughen it.
“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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