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Dessert

Smooth Marmalade

A preserved orange fruit spread made by boiling orange pulp, zest, skins, and sugar until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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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 ↓

Smooth Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Weigh the oranges.

  2. Use the same weight of sugar.

  3. Wipe the oranges with a wet cloth.

  4. Grate the zest off.

  5. Cut the oranges into quarters.

  6. Remove the skins.

  7. Scrape off the white pulp.

  8. Carefully pick out the seeds.

  9. Boil the skins in water until tender.

  10. Squeeze out the water from the skins.

  11. Remove any stringy parts.

  12. Clarify the sugar.

Make the marmalade

  1. Mix the sugar gradually with the pounded skins, stirring continuously.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pan.

  3. Boil until the sugar is incorporated.

  4. Add the orange pulp.

  5. Boil until the mixture is smooth and thick.

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 + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Oranges
Provide the peel, pulp and juice that form the marmalade's bitter flavour and set.
White sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it thickens, helps it set into a spreadable gel.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture is smooth and thick. Sugar and pectin only set into a gel when the mixture is cooked to a high enough concentration. Stopping too early leaves a runny preserve, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull in flavour.

“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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