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Clear Marmalade

A clear marmalade made from bitter oranges and lemons, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓

Clear Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Thinly pare the fruit into ribbons, then cut the ribbons into thin chips with scissors.

  2. Remove all the white pith and pips from the fruit, then divide it into pieces.

  3. Soak the fruit in cold water to cover overnight, then strain.

Make the marmalade

  1. Put the fruit in a jelly pan, cover with cold water, and add the chips tied in muslin.

  2. Boil for two hours, skimming and stirring frequently.

  3. Remove the chips, then pour the pulp and liquid through a sieve and let it drip overnight.

  4. Weigh the liquid and chips, then put them in a jelly pan with slightly more than their weight in sugar.

  5. Boil for ten minutes or until it begins to set, skimming if necessary.

Jar

  1. Pour into jars and cover with gummed paper.

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. Lemon + sugartop 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

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

Bitter oranges
Provide the peel for chips and the pectin-rich pulp that helps the marmalade set.
Lemons
Add extra acidity and pectin, supporting a firm set and bright flavour.
Preserving sugar
Sweetens and, at high concentration, helps the marmalade gel and keep well.

The step that matters

Boiling until it sets. Setting depends on pectin, acid and sugar reaching the right concentration. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull, so testing for a set matters.

Swap the bitter orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Bitter orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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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