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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A sweet preserve made from oranges, lemons, 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. Slice the oranges and lemons, rind and all, into fine shreds.

  2. Grate the rind of 1 lemon.

  3. Add the water and let it stand for 24 hours.

Cook and sweeten

  1. Cook for 1 hour.

  2. While hot, add the sugar and stir well.

  3. Let it stand for another 24 hours.

  4. Cook for 1.5 hours after it begins to boil.

Jar

  1. Put into jars while hot and do not cover until completely cool.

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
Provide the bitter peel and pulp that give marmalade its characteristic flavour.
Lemons
Add acidity and natural pectin to help the marmalade set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken and keep as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook for 1.5 hours after it begins to boil. Marmalade sets when pectin, acid and sugar reach the right concentration. Cooking too briefly leaves it runny, while cooking too long can darken and toughen the flavour, so timing from the first boil matters.

“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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