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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from sliced oranges, lemon, sugar, and water, boiled and set in jars.

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. Slice the oranges and lemon very thin.

  2. Pour the water over the sliced fruit and let it stand covered for about 24 hours.

Cook

  1. Boil the mixture slowly for 1 hour. Add the sugar.

  2. Let the mixture stand for another 24 hours.

  3. Boil the mixture for 1 hour and 25 minutes.

Jar and seal

  1. Pour the mixture into jelly glasses.

  2. Seal the glasses when cold.

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 fruit, along with peel and seeds that supply natural pectin for setting.
Lemon
Adds acidity and extra pectin, which helps the marmalade set and brightens the flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture gel and keep as it thickens.

The step that matters

Boil for 1 hour and 25 minutes. The final long boil concentrates the mixture as water evaporates, so the sugar and citrus pectin can set. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while boiling too long can darken and turn it bitter.

“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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