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Dessert

Transparent Marmalade

A clear marmalade made from orange pulp and peel, sweetened with refined sugar.

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

Transparent Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peel

  1. Cut the oranges into quarters and remove the pulp, discarding the skin and seeds.

  2. Soak the peels overnight in a mixture of salt and water.

  3. Boil the peels in spring water until tender, then cut them into very thin slices.

Make the marmalade

  1. Add the sliced peels to the pulp.

  2. For every pound of marmalade, add 1.5 pounds of finely sifted double refined sugar.

  3. Boil the mixture gently for 20 minutes, stirring constantly to avoid breaking the slices.

  4. If not clear, simmer for an additional 5-6 minutes while stirring.

Jar

  1. Once cooled, transfer to jelly or sweetmeat glasses and seal with brandied paper.

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 + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Very pale seville oranges
Provide the peel and pulp that form the marmalade and its bitter flavour.
Double refined sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it set into a firm, preserved gel.

The step that matters

Boiling with constant stirring. Sugar dissolves and the pectin and peel cook evenly only when the mixture is stirred during gentle boiling. Stirring keeps the thin slices from breaking up and sticking to the pan, which would cloud the 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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