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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A citrus marmalade made from orange, lemon, and grapefruit, sliced thin and cooked with water and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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

  1. Select nice fresh fruit and slice very thin, skins and all; one orange, one lemon, and one grapefruit, omitting part of the rind of the grapefruit.

  2. Measure and add three times the amount of water.

  3. Let stand twenty-four hours, then bring to a boil and cook ten minutes.

Make the marmalade

  1. Let stand another twenty-four hours, then measure and add equal amount of sugar and boil till it jellies.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

136Calories
2 gProtein
1 gFat
35 gCarbs

Counts 3 of 4 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 3 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Orange1 medium (131g)62
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Fruitnot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

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. See the original page.

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. Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + grapetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,412 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Their peel and pulp provide the bitter-sweet flavour and natural pectin that help the marmalade set.
Lemon
Adds acidity, which brightens the flavour and supports pectin setting.
Grapefruit (in the method)
Adds bitterness and aromatic peel oils, giving the marmalade its distinctive character.
Sugar (in the method)
Sweetens the marmalade and, with heat, helps it thicken and set into a jelly.

The step that matters

Boiling until it jellies. Sugar, acid and pectin set into a gel only at the right concentration. Boiling too briefly leaves the marmalade runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull in flavour.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Grapethe original

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

“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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