Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Orange Marmalade
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Weigh the oranges and measure an equal weight of sugar.
Thinly peel the rind of half the oranges and soak in cold water in a covered bucket until soft.
Grate the rinds of the remaining oranges and set aside.
Squeeze the juice from the oranges, discarding the seeds.
Make the marmalade
In a kettle, combine the sugar with less than ½ pint of water for each pound of sugar and boil, skimming until clear and thick.
Cut the boiled parings into small shreds and add to the clarified sugar, boiling for 10 minutes.
Add the pulp, juice, and grated rind, and boil all together for 20 minutes or until it becomes a transparent mass.
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.
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Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,212 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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
- Provide the bitter peel, pulp and juice that give marmalade its flavour and set.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled thick, helps it set and turn clear.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled and clarified before the fruit is added.
The step that matters
Boiling until clear and thick. Skimming the sugar and water syrup removes impurities so the marmalade turns clear. Boiling it to the right concentration lets the mixture set rather than stay runny.
“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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