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Dessert

Genuine Scotch Marmalade

A citrus preserve made from bitter oranges, water, and sugar, steeped and boiled to a jelly consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Bitter orange and sugar work together. They rank in the top 41% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14 recipes. The science ↓

Genuine Scotch Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the rind of the oranges into quarters and peel it off, removing some of the spongy white skin if a thinner marmalade is desired.

  2. Cut the rind into thin chips, about half an inch long, and divide the pulp into small bits, removing the seeds.

  3. Steep the seeds in part of the water for the marmalade.

  4. Put the chips and pulp into a deep dish and pour boiling water over them.

  5. Let the mixture sit for 12 to 14 hours.

Cook and set

  1. Transfer the mixture to a preserving pan and boil until the chips are tender.

  2. Gradually add the poured sugar and boil until the marmalade jellies.

  3. Strain the water from the seeds through a sieve, working them with the back of a spoon to extract a clear jelly.

  4. Add the jelly to the fruit mixture when it is first set on the fire.

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bitter oranges
Provide the rind and pulp that form the marmalade's chips and body, and its bitter flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with the pectin, helps it set into a jelly.
Water
Softens the rind and extracts pectin from the seeds to help the marmalade jell.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar gradually. Adding sugar slowly while boiling keeps the mixture dissolving evenly and helps the marmalade reach a proper set. Adding it all at once can cause crystals or uneven jelling.

“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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