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Orange Marmalade

A preserve made by boiling sliced oranges and lemons with water and sugar.

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. Wash the oranges and lemons thoroughly.

  2. Slice the oranges and lemons very thin into separate dishes.

  3. For every 4 parts of orange by weight, add 1 part lemon.

Make the first boil

  1. Add 1.5 times as much water as the combined weight of the orange and lemon.

  2. Boil gently for 30 to 45 minutes, starting from when it begins to boil.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool for 24 hours.

Add sugar and finish

  1. Weigh the fruit and water mixture.

  2. To 1 part of the mixture, add 1.25 parts sugar.

  3. Boil gently for another 30 to 45 minutes, starting from when it begins to boil.

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

Sour oranges
Supply the bitter flavour and much of the pectin that helps the marmalade set.
Lemons
Add acidity and extra pectin, which supports a firm set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, at high concentration, helps it set and keep.

The step that matters

Boiling again after adding the sugar. Pectin only forms a firm gel when sugar and acid are present in the right proportion and the mixture reaches a full boil. Boiling too briefly can leave the marmalade runny, while boiling too long can darken it and dull the flavour.

“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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