Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from Seville and sweet oranges, lemon juice, sugar, and water, boiled until it gels.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Slice the oranges with the peel on very thin, removing the seeds.

  2. Combine the sliced fruit with 6 cups of water and let it stand for 24 hours.

Cook

  1. Boil the mixture for 2 hours.

  2. Weigh the boiled fruit and add 1.5 pounds of sugar for every pound of fruit.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes or until it jellies.

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

Seville oranges
Their peel and seeds release natural pectin, which helps the marmalade set, and they give a bitter edge.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade, helps it set into a gel, and helps preserve it.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and supports pectin gel formation.
Sweet oranges
Add sweetness and mild citrus flavor that balances the bitter Seville oranges.

The step that matters

Boil for 20 minutes or until it jellies. Pectin, sugar and acid must reach the right concentration to set. Stopping too early leaves a runny spread, while boiling too long can darken and stiffen 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.

More orange marmalade recipes

Seville 44Pudding 17Clear 10Scotch 6Bitter 4 See all 487 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes