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Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from sliced oranges, lemons, and sugar, simmered until jelly-like.

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. Slice the oranges and lemons very thin and remove the seeds.

  2. Measure the juice; if it's less than 6 pints, add enough water to reach this amount.

  3. Optionally, slice one grapefruit to add to the mixture.

  4. Let the fruit sit in a covered earthen jar or bowl for several hours or overnight.

Cook and set

  1. Heat the fruit slowly in a preserving kettle and simmer gently until the orange peel is tender.

  2. Stir in the sugar and boil until the mixture looks clear and jelly-like.

  3. Test the marmalade by cooling a small amount in a saucer to check the consistency.

  4. Let it cool before transferring to glasses.

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
Peel and pulp supply the bitter flavour and the pectin-rich peel that helps the marmalade set.
Lemons
Add acidity, which supports pectin setting and brightens the flavour.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with acid and pectin, helps it set into a jelly.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture looks clear and jelly-like. Sugar and pectin only gel at a high enough concentration with acid present. Stopping too early leaves a runny marmalade, while boiling too long can darken and stiffen it, so the saucer test helps confirm the 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.

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