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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserved citrus spread made from sliced oranges, water, sugar, and lemon juice.

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

  1. Weigh the oranges before peeling and slice them very thin, skins included.

  2. Soak the sliced oranges in 8 cups of water for 24 hours.

Cook the fruit

  1. Boil gently, uncovered, until a fork easily penetrates the skins.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool.

Sweeten and set

  1. Measure the mixture again and add 5 pounds of sugar for each 4 cups of orange mixture.

  2. Cook for 1 hour and 45 minutes without stirring.

  3. Add the juice of 5 lemons and seal the marmalade.

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
Supply the bitter peel, pulp and natural pectin that give marmalade its flavor and body.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, with heat and acid, helps the mixture reach a firm, spreadable set.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavor and helps pectin set the gel.

The step that matters

Cooking after adding the sugar. Sugar, acid and pectin only form a gel once the mixture reaches the right concentration. Undercooking leaves marmalade runny, while overcooking can make it stiff or cause it to scorch on the bottom of the pan.

“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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