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Mrs. Ray's Marmalade

A marmalade made from Seville oranges, sugar, and cold water, cooked until the sugar reaches the crackle stage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Mrs. Ray's Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Grate the oranges.

  2. Cut the oranges in half.

  3. Squeeze out the juice.

  4. Remove the pith.

  5. Soak the orange halves in cold water overnight.

  6. Boil the oranges in a copper pan until tender.

  7. Transfer the oranges to cold water.

  8. Drain the oranges well.

  9. Cut the oranges into small shreds.

  10. Reserve some shreds to pound into a paste.

  11. Strain the juice through a sieve.

  12. Combine the strained juice with the grated orange peel.

Make the marmalade

  1. Clarify an equal weight of sugar to the weight of the oranges.

  2. Boil the clarified sugar until it reaches the crackle stage in cold water.

  3. Add the oranges to the sugar mixture.

  4. Boil the mixture for half an hour.

  5. Pour the marmalade into pots.

  6. Let the marmalade cool completely before sealing.

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

Seville oranges
Provide the bitter peel, pectin and acidity that give marmalade its flavour and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled, helps it thicken and set.
Cold water
Softens the orange halves and draws out bitterness during the overnight soak.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar to the crackle stage. Sugar must be boiled to the right concentration so the marmalade sets when cooled. Too little boiling leaves it runny, and too much makes it hard and sticky.

“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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