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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from oranges, lemons, water, and sugar, boiled and jarred.

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. Slice the oranges and lemons crosswise as thinly as possible and remove the seeds.

  2. Put the sliced fruit in a preserving kettle with the water and let it stand for 36 hours.

Cook

  1. After 36 hours, boil the mixture for 2 hours.

  2. Add the sugar and boil for 1 hour longer.

  3. Turn the marmalade into jars or glasses.

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

Oranges
Provide the bitter peel and pulp that give marmalade its characteristic flavour.
Lemons
Add acidity and extra pectin-rich pulp that help the marmalade set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled, helps it thicken and set.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar and boiling for 1 hour longer. Sugar must dissolve fully before the long boil, and the mixture needs enough time at a rolling boil to reach the setting point. Undercooking leaves marmalade runny, while overcooking can darken it and make it stiff.

“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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