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Thick Marmalade

A thick marmalade made from bitter oranges, water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Thick Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Wash the bitter oranges and cut them into quarters, then slice them thinly.

  2. Remove the seeds from the sliced oranges.

  3. Soak the sliced oranges in 2 cups of water overnight.

Cook the rind

  1. Combine the soaked oranges with the strained liquid and add 4 cups of water.

  2. Boil until the rind is tender, about 1 hour.

  3. Let it sit for another 24 hours.

Set and finish

  1. Measure the pulp.

  2. Add 3 cups of sugar for every 1 pint of pulp.

  3. Boil until it reaches a jelly‑like consistency on a plate.

  4. If desired, add a few lemons during the boiling process.

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

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

  2. Bitter orange + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Bitter orange + sugartop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14 recipes

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

Bitter oranges
Provide the peel and pulp that give marmalade its bitter flavour and its set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with boiling, helps it thicken into a jelly-like set.

The step that matters

Boiling to a jelly-like set. Sugar and pectin only gel once enough water has evaporated and the sugar concentration is high enough. Stopping too early leaves a runny marmalade, while boiling too long can make it stiff and dull.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Orangefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Grapefits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bitter orange, 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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