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Orange Marmalade

A preserved citrus spread made by boiling sliced oranges and lemons with water and sugar.

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

Soak the fruit

  1. Slice the oranges and lemons.

  2. Add the sliced fruit to 3 pints of water.

  3. Set aside for 24 hours.

First boil

  1. Boil the mixture rapidly for 45 minutes.

  2. Set aside for another 24 hours.

Add sugar and finish

  1. Weigh the mixture.

  2. Add 1 ¼ pounds of sugar for every pound of fruit.

  3. Boil rapidly for 50 minutes.

  4. Pour into glasses.

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 pectin and bitter peel flavour that give marmalade its character and set.
Lemons
Add acidity and extra pectin, helping the marmalade set firmly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with pectin and acid, helps the mixture gel as it thickens.

The step that matters

Boil rapidly after adding the sugar. Pectin, sugar and acid only set into a gel when the mixture reaches a high enough temperature and concentration. Boiling too briefly leaves marmalade runny, so the full rapid boil matters.

“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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