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Dessert

Boston Orange Marmalade

A sweet and tart marmalade made from lemons, sweet and sour oranges, water, and white sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Boston Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Slice the lemons and oranges very thin.

  2. Cover the slices with 4 quarts of cold water.

  3. Let stand for 36 hours.

Cook and thicken

  1. Boil the mixture for 2 hours.

  2. Add 8 pounds of white sugar.

  3. Boil for 1 hour longer, or until thick enough, stirring often.

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. 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 bulk of the fruit, bitter peel and pulp that give marmalade its characteristic flavour.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma that brighten the sweetness of the marmalade.
White sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it concentrates, helps it set into a thick spread.

The step that matters

Boiling until thick enough. Pectin in the citrus peel and pith sets the marmalade only once sugar and acid have concentrated it enough. Stopping too early leaves a runny result, while overcooking can make it stiff and dark.

“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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