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
Wash the oranges and place them whole in a preserving pan. Cover with cold water and bring to a boil.
Pour off the water, add fresh water, and boil gently until the rinds can be easily pierced with a pin.
Remove and drain the oranges, then slice them thinly, including the skin and pulp. Discard the seeds.
Make the marmalade
In a preserving pan, combine the sliced fruit with ½ pint of the boiling water for every pound of fruit and half the sugar.
Simmer gently for 30 minutes, then add the remaining sugar and boil for 20 minutes or until the marmalade jellies.
Jar and store
Pour into jars, let cool, then cover and store.
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.
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Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,634 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Seville oranges
- Provide the bitter peel and pectin-rich pith that give marmalade its flavour and set.
- Lemons
- Add extra acidity and pectin, helping the marmalade set and balancing sweetness.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the marmalade and, at high concentration, helps it set into a gel.
The step that matters
Boil until the marmalade jellies. Sugar, acid and pectin only form a firm gel at the right concentration. Stopping too early leaves a runny spread, while over-boiling can darken and stiffen it.
“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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