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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

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

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. Wipe the oranges and lemon with a damp cloth, removing any specks from the rinds.

  2. Finely shred the oranges and lemon with a sharp knife, discarding the seeds.

  3. Soak the shredded fruit in 3 pints of water for 24 hours.

Cook and set

  1. Boil the mixture in the same water until the rinds are tender, about 1 hour or longer.

  2. Add the sugar and boil again for 30 minutes, testing for doneness by placing a small amount on a cold plate.

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

Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it boils, helps it thicken and set.
Oranges
Provide the bitter peel and pulp that give marmalade its flavour and body.
Lemon
Adds extra acidity and natural pectin to help the marmalade set.

The step that matters

Testing for doneness on a cold plate. Sugar and pectin need enough boiling to reach the setting point. Too little boiling leaves a runny marmalade, while too much can make it stiff, so a cold-plate test checks whether it will gel as it cools.

“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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