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Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from orange skins, pulp, juice, sugar, and water, boiled until thick.

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 the fruit

  1. Wash the oranges and cut them in half crosswise.

  2. Squeeze out the juice and seeds.

  3. Remove the white, pithy part of the pulp from the skins.

  4. Put the skins and pulp through a meat chopper.

  5. Cut the orange peel into strips.

Make the marmalade

  1. Place the mixture in a saucepan with water and boil, changing the water three times.

  2. On the last change, add the orange juice to the skins.

  3. Measure the mixture.

  4. Add an equal measure of sugar.

  5. If using sweet oranges, add the juice of one lemon for every four oranges.

  6. Add the strips to the pulp before boiling again.

  7. Boil until it becomes thick and glassy, about two hours or longer.

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 peel, pulp and juice that set into the marmalade's body and flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken and become glossy as it cooks.
Lemon
Adds acidity to balance sweetness when sweet oranges are used.

The step that matters

Boil until thick and glassy. Pectin in the peel and pulp sets the mixture only once enough sugar and water have cooked off and the concentration is high. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it dark and 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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