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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from bitter oranges, lemons, sugar, and water, simmered and set into jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the rinds from the fruit and slice them into thin chips.

  2. If the skins are thick, cut away some of the white pith and discard it.

  3. Wash the fruit well and remove the seeds.

Cook

  1. Place the chips of peel, fruit, and 14 cups of water into a porcelain or granite kettle.

  2. Boil gently for 1 hour, then set aside in a cool place for 24 hours.

  3. Return to heat and bring to a boil.

  4. Test for doneness by checking if it stiffens.

  5. Pour into jelly glasses and cover with paper brushed with egg white.

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

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

  2. Bitter orange + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Bitter orange + sugartop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14 recipes

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 peel and fruit that give the marmalade its characteristic bitter flavor and pectin.
Lemons
Add acidity and additional pectin to help the marmalade set.
Crystallized sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with the cooking, helps it thicken and set.

The step that matters

Test for doneness by checking if it stiffens. Marmalade sets as its pectin and sugar concentrate during boiling. Undercooked marmalade stays runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull in flavor, so the stiffening test is the main check for the right point.

Swap the bitter orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Bitter orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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