Name: Orange Marmalade
Ingredients: 12 thin-skinned, juicy oranges; sugar (equal weight to the oranges); ½ cup cold water for every pound of sugar; 1 egg white for every 2 pounds of sugar

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

12 thin-skinned, juicy oranges
sugar (equal weight to the oranges)
½ cup cold water for every pound of sugar
1 egg white for every 2 pounds of sugar

Directions

Juice the oranges and remove any seeds.
Crush the sugar with a rolling pin if using loaf or lump sugar.
In a preserving kettle, combine the crushed sugar and the orange juice.
Add cold water according to the sugar weight.
Whisk the egg whites and stir them into the mixture.
Let the mixture stand for a short time before cooking.

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.

Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Orange + eggtop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,696 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Swap the orange

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Lemonfits better
Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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Orange Marmalade