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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from grated lemon and orange rind, sliced pulp, sugar, and water, boiled until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

8 to 10 glasses

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Grate the yellow rind off the lemon and oranges, discarding the bitter white part.

  2. Slice the pulp of the lemon and oranges.

  3. Cover the slices with water and let stand for 24 hours.

Cook and jar

  1. Add the sugar and boil for 1 hour or until thick.

  2. Pour into jars and seal. This makes 8 to 10 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. Lemon + orangetop 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. Sugar + orangetop 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

Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it boils, thickens it into a set spread.
Oranges
Provide the bitter peel and pulp that give marmalade its flavour and body.
Lemon
Adds extra acidity and natural pectin to help the marmalade set.

The step that matters

Boiling with the sugar. Sugar must boil long enough to concentrate and reach the setting point; too short a boil leaves a runny marmalade, while overboiling can darken and toughen 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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