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Rhubarb Marmalade

A preserve made from rhubarb, oranges, sugar, and optional lemons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Rhubarb Marmalade

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 ↓

Rhubarb Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel the oranges, removing the rind and seeds.

  2. Put the orange pulp and finely chopped peel into a preserving pan.

Cook

  1. Add the rhubarb and boil for 2 hours.

  2. Cook the fruit for an additional 30 minutes before adding the sugar.

Optional lemon variation

  1. If desired, substitute 3 lemons for the 5 oranges for a different flavor.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Orange + rhubarbtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Rhubarb + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together546 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  5. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Oranges
Add aromatic peel and natural pectin that helps the marmalade set.
Rhubarb
Provides the bulk of the fruit and its tart flavor, balancing the sweetness.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps it set.

The step that matters

Cook the fruit before adding the sugar. Sugar slows the softening of fruit and peel, so cooking the fruit first lets it become tender. Adding sugar too early can leave the peel tough and the rhubarb firm.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, rhubarb, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, rhubarb, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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