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China Orange Marmalade

A marmalade made from China oranges, sugar, and water.

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

China Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Clean the oranges carefully and squeeze out the seeds, saving the juice.

  2. Strain the juice to remove any seeds.

  3. Chop the skins and pulp using a meat chopper and place them in a kettle.

Make the marmalade

  1. Add the strained juice to the kettle and bring to a boil.

  2. Add an equal measure of sugar, stirring until dissolved, and boil until the mixture becomes glassy.

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 + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

China oranges
Supply the peel and pulp for bitterness, aroma and body in the finished marmalade.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it set into a thick, glossy spread as it boils.
Water
Helps the fruit soften and extract its pectin during the initial boil.

The step that matters

Boiling until glassy. Boiling must continue until the sugar concentration and temperature reach the point where the pectin and acid can gel. Stopping too early leaves a runny marmalade, while overboiling can make it dark and overly stiff.

“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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