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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from bitter oranges, lemon, water, sugar, optional sweet orange pulp, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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. Slice the bitter oranges and lemon very thinly.

  2. Combine with 6 quarts of water in a large pot and let stand overnight or for 36 hours.

Make the marmalade

  1. Boil the mixture rapidly for 2.5 hours.

  2. Add 7 to 8 pounds of white sugar and boil for an additional hour.

  3. Remove all seeds and hard ends from the mixture.

  4. If using sweet oranges, add only the pulp.

  5. Optionally, stir in ⅓ cup of brandy just before removing from heat.

Pot and store

  1. Pour into pots, allow to cool, and cover.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Bitter orange + orangetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetal (cream, earthy).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 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

Bitter oranges
Provide the bitter peel and pulp that give marmalade its characteristic flavor and set.
White sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled, helps it set into a spreadable gel.
Lemon
Adds acidity and natural pectin that help the marmalade set.

The step that matters

Remove all seeds and hard ends. Seeds and hard ends are bitter and tough, and leaving them in spoils the texture and taste of the finished marmalade.

“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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