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Dessert

Orange Marmelade

A preserved fruit spread made from oranges, lemons, water, and sugar, boiled and jellied.

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 Marmelade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shred and measure the oranges and lemons.

  2. To each cup of fruit, add 3 cups of water and soak in a crock for 24 hours.

Boil and rest

  1. Boil hard for 10 minutes and let stand for another 24 hours.

Add sugar and set

  1. To each cup of fruit, add 1 cup of sugar, then an additional cup.

  2. Cook until it jells, then pour into 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
Their peel and pulp supply pectin and acidity, which help the marmalade set and give it a bright, bitter edge.
Lemons
Add extra pectin and acidity, helping the mixture gel and balancing the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it cooks down, helps it thicken and set.

The step that matters

Cook until it jells. Sugar, pectin and acid must concentrate together to form a gel. Stopping too early leaves the marmalade runny, while cooking too long makes it stiff and can darken its 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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