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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserved citrus spread made from sliced oranges, lemons, 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

Prepare the fruit

  1. Slice the oranges and lemons thinly.

  2. Combine the sliced fruit with cold water in a bowl and let it stand overnight.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Simmer the mixture until the orange peel breaks down completely, then let it stand overnight again.

  2. For each pint of the mixture, add 1 pound of warmed sugar.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring until the sugar is dissolved.

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

Naval oranges
Supply the bulk of the fruit, bitter peel, and natural pectin that helps the marmalade set.
Lemons
Add acidity and extra pectin, which support a firm set and bright flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and preserves the marmalade, helping it set into a thick spread.

The step that matters

Simmer until the orange peel is fully softened. Peel that is not fully broken down stays tough and chewy in the finished marmalade. Softening the peel also releases pectin, which is needed for the marmalade to set properly once sugar is added.

“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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