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Dessert

Orange Marmalade— No. I

A preserved orange peel and fruit mixture sweetened with sugar.

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— No. I

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peel

  1. Pare the rind of the oranges as thin as possible and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Tie the rind in muslin and boil slowly until clear.

  3. Peel off the white inner rind and break the oranges into pieces.

Cook and strain

  1. Cover the orange pieces with water and boil for 45 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a flannel bag.

  3. Add half of the boiled skins and boil for 20 minutes, skimming off any scum.

Jar

  1. Pour into jars and cover with the remaining skins when 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 + 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
Supply the peel, pulp and juice that give marmalade its bitter flavour and pectin-rich body.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it concentrates, helps it set into a spreadable gel.

The step that matters

Boiling the rind until clear. Thin, slow boiling softens the peel so it becomes tender and translucent. Rushing it leaves tough, opaque pieces, and the peel is what gives marmalade its texture.

“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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