Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from oranges and lemons, with rind and pulp, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Cut the rind very thin from a third of the oranges and lemons.

  2. Boil the rind in 2 quarts of water until it can be pierced easily with a broom straw.

  3. Drain the water and cut the rind into fine strips.

  4. Remove all the white bitter skin and pips from the remaining fruit.

  5. Combine the rind strips with the pulp of the oranges and lemons.

Cook and seal

  1. Weigh the mixture and add an equal weight of sugar.

  2. Cook in a porcelain-lined or granite-ware kettle until clear.

  3. Pour into glasses, let cool, cover with brandied paper, and seal.

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 bulk of the pulp and juice, giving the marmalade its main flavor and body.
Lemons
Add acidity and natural pectin, helping the marmalade set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, at this high concentration, helps it set and keep.

The step that matters

Cook until clear. Cooking must continue until the rind is fully tender and the syrup thickens to a clear, gel-ready state. Undercooking leaves the marmalade runny and the rind tough; overcooking can darken and harden it.

“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.

More orange marmalade recipes

Seville 44Pudding 17Clear 10Scotch 6Bitter 4 See all 487 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes