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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserved citrus spread made from oranges, lemon, sugar, and water, simmered and canned.

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

Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Slice 3 oranges and the lemon as thin as possible.

  2. Peel the other 2 oranges and remove all tough white skin.

  3. Slice the peeled oranges thinly and add to the first slices.

  4. Combine the fruit with 1 pound of sugar and 2 quarts of water.

Cook and set

  1. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

  2. Boil for 2 hours.

  3. Let it stand again for 24 hours.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes.

Jar

  1. Can the marmalade.

  2. Seal the jars.

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

Oranges
Provide the bulk of the fruit, along with their peel, which gives the marmalade its bitter flavour and texture.
Lemon
Adds sharp acidity and extra pectin-rich peel that helps the marmalade set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled down, helps it thicken and set.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 hours. Long simmering softens the thick peel and draws pectin out of the fruit. Too short a boil leaves the peel tough and the marmalade runny, while overcooking can darken and bitter it.

“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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