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Dessert

Marmalade Jelly

A preserved fruit spread made from Seville oranges, sweet oranges, lemons, water, and sugar, boiled and strained into a jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Marmalade Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrub the oranges.

  2. Take a few strips of peel from the deepest colored oranges.

  3. Slice all the oranges and lemons; peel and pulp them, reserving the strips of peel.

  4. Remove the pips and steep the pulp in 3 pints of water for 24 hours.

  5. Steep the pips by themselves.

Make the jelly

  1. Strain off the juice.

  2. Boil all ingredients together for 2 hours.

  3. Strain through a jelly bag.

  4. Remove the strips of peel before pouring into the jelly bag.

Finish

  1. Cut the strips very fine.

  2. Add the finely cut peel to the jelly.

  3. For each pound of juice, add 1½ lbs of loaf sugar.

  4. Boil for 25 minutes and skim well.

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

Seville oranges
Their natural pectin and acidity help the jelly set and give a sharp flavor.
Lemons
Their acidity and pectin support setting and brighten the flavor.
Sweet oranges
They add sweetness, aroma and body to the juice.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, boiled with the juice, helps it set and keeps it preserved.

The step that matters

Boil for 25 minutes and skim well. Skimming removes foam and scum that would cloud the jelly. Boiling with the sugar concentrates the liquid so it can set properly.

“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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