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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from oranges, lemons, water, and sugar, simmered 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. Cut the oranges and lemons in half.

  2. Soak the fruit in 4 quarts of water for 24 hours.

  3. Boil the fruit in the water until transparent.

  4. Cut the fruit into very fine shreds with a sharp knife.

Cook and bottle

  1. Return the shredded fruit to the liquid.

  2. Add 1 pound of sugar for every pint of fruit.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil again.

  4. Boil quickly for 20 minutes, then bottle.

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 and pectin-rich pith that give marmalade its flavor and set.
Lemons
Add acidity and additional pectin, helping the marmalade set and balancing the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled with the fruit, helps it thicken and set.

The step that matters

Boil quickly for 20 minutes after adding the sugar. Sugar and fruit pectin set only when the mixture reaches a high enough concentration at a rolling boil. Too gentle a simmer leaves the marmalade runny, while overcooking can darken and dull the flavor.

“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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