Name: Orange Jam
Ingredients: 1 pound oranges; 1 pound sugar; water (if needed)

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 ↓

Orange Jam

Ingredients

1 pound oranges
1 pound sugar
water (if needed)

Directions

Prepare the oranges

Pare half the oranges and cut the rind into shreds.
Boil the shredded rind until tender and set aside.
Grate the rind of the remaining oranges, discarding the white inner skin.
Remove seeds and cut all fruit into small pieces.

Cook the jam

Drain off the juice, add the sugar, and if the oranges are not very juicy, add a little water.
Boil for 6 minutes.
Add the chopped fruit and grated peel.
Boil for 20 minutes 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.

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

Oranges: Provide the fruit, peel and juice that form the jam's body and bitter-sweet aroma.
Sugar: Sweetens the jam and, when boiled, thickens it and helps it set.

“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.