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Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from orange rind, pulp, and juice boiled with water and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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. Cut the orange rind into fine chips, removing most of the bitter white part.

  2. Divide the pulp, carefully removing seeds and stringy centers.

  3. In a large crock, combine the rind, pulp, and juice with 9 quarts of water.

  4. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Cook and set

  1. Boil the mixture for about 1 hour.

  2. Let it stand again until the following day.

  3. Add sugar equal to the amount of liquid mixture and cook until it jellies, ensuring it is not too stiff at first.

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

Oranges
Rind provides bitter aromatic oils and pectin, while pulp and juice supply the fruit body and set.
Lemons
Adds acidity and extra pectin, helping the marmalade brighten in flavor and set properly.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled with the fruit, helps it reach a jelly-like set.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar and cooking until it jellies. Sugar and pectin need enough acid and heat to gel. Cooking too briefly leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff, so the set must be judged carefully.

“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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