Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Orange Marmalade
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Wash the oranges and peel them like apples.
Place the peel in a porcelain-lined kettle with cold water, covering it, and boil until tender, adding more water if necessary.
Cut the oranges in half.
Squeeze out the juice and pulp into a bowl using a strainer.
Pour the juice and pulp over the sugar.
Cover the white skins with cold water and boil for 30 minutes.
Drain the water onto the sugar.
Pound the soft part of the boiled skins until you have 2 pounds 4 ounces.
Add the pounded skins to the sugar and juice.
Drain the tender peel.
Chop it finely or grate the yellow rind, tying it in a muslin bag.
Boil the muslin bag until soft.
Cook the marmalade
Combine everything in a porcelain kettle or bright tin preserving pan.
Boil for about an hour, checking occasionally for thickness.
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 + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,212 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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
- Sour oranges
- Provide the bitter peel, pulp and juice that give marmalade its characteristic flavour and set.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the marmalade and, with boiling, helps it thicken and set.
- Cold water
- Softens the peel during boiling so it becomes tender enough to cut and pound.
The step that matters
Boiling the marmalade until it thickens. Checking the thickness during the final hour matters because the mixture sets as sugar concentrates and water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while boiling too long can 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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