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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from oranges, sugar, and water, cooked until thick and jelly-like.

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 ↓

Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Mix sugar and water in a pot.

  2. Boil to a thick syrup, skimming carefully.

Prepare the oranges

  1. Rub the oranges with a damp cloth.

  2. Grate the yellow rind from one-third of the oranges.

  3. Pour boiling water over the grated rind to prevent hardening.

  4. Place the orange skins in cold water.

  5. Boil until very tender.

  6. Drain the skins.

  7. Scrape out the stringy insides.

  8. Cut the skins into strips.

  9. Add the strips to the syrup.

  10. Boil.

  11. Divide the oranges into sections.

  12. Remove seeds and as much of the white inner skin as possible.

  13. Save the juice in a bowl while working with the oranges.

Finish and seal

  1. Add the grated rind, pulp, and juice to the syrup.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes or until it jellies.

  3. Pour into jelly glasses and seal.

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

Oranges
Provide the peel, pulp, and juice that give marmalade its bitter-sweet flavor and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled to a thick syrup, helps it set into a jelly.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled into a syrup.

The step that matters

Boil for 20 minutes or until it jellies. Sugar, fruit pectin, and acid must reach the right concentration to set. Undercooking leaves a runny marmalade, while overcooking can darken and toughen the flavor.

“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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