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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from oranges, lemon, water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash and slice the oranges and lemon thinly, including the peel.

  2. Combine the fruit with 3.75 quarts of water and let it sit for 24 hours.

Cook and add sugar

  1. Boil the mixture vigorously for 45 minutes.

  2. Let it sit for another 24 hours, then weigh the fruit.

  3. For each pound of fruit, add 1 pound of sugar and the juice of another lemon.

  4. Boil fiercely again for 45 minutes, skimming often.

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
Provide the bitter peel and pulp that give marmalade its characteristic flavor and pectin.
Lemon
Adds extra pectin and acidity, helping the marmalade set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, at high concentration, helps it gel and preserve.

The step that matters

Boil fiercely again for 45 minutes, skimming often. Sugar must dissolve fully and the mixture must reach a hard boil so pectin and sugar can set properly. Skimming removes foam and scum that would otherwise cloud the marmalade or spoil its texture.

“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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