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Orange Marmalade

A sweet preserve made from oranges, lemons, sugar, and water, boiled and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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

Steep the fruit

  1. Steep the sliced oranges and lemons in 4 quarts of cold water for 24 hours.

  2. Remove all the seeds and steep them in 2 quarts of boiling water, keeping them hot in an oven for 3 hours.

  3. The next day, strain the seeds from the liquid.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Combine the steeped fruit and the strained liquid in a preserving pan and boil slowly for 2 hours.

  2. Add 12 lbs of sugar and boil for 1 hour.

  3. Add the juice of 4 lemons just before removing from heat.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and lemon 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, when boiled with the fruit, helps the marmalade set.
Seville oranges
Supply the bitter peel, pectin and acidity that give marmalade its flavour and structure.
Lemons
Add extra acidity and pectin to help the marmalade set.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar. Sugar should be added only after the fruit has softened, because adding it too early can toughen the peel. Once dissolved, it helps the syrup reach the concentration needed to set.

“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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