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American Marmalade

A citrus marmalade made from grapefruit rind, pulp, and optional orange, simmered with sugar until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Grapefruit and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 233 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

American Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Quarter and peel the grapefruit, then boil the rind in plenty of water.

  2. Separate the pulp from the seeds and pith.

  3. Cover the pith with 1 pint of boiling water.

  4. Squeeze and strain the pith into a bowl.

  5. Squeeze the rinds dry.

  6. Cut the rinds into thin slivers with scissors.

Make the marmalade

  1. Add the strained liquid to 5 cups of granulated sugar and simmer until clear.

  2. Add the pulp and juice of the grapefruit, and optionally the pulp and juice of 1-2 oranges for color.

  3. Add the slivers to the boiling mixture until thickened.

  4. Boil until it jellies.

  5. Pour into small jars for storage.

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. Grapefruit + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Grapefruit + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and orange 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

Grapefruit
Provides the bitter peel and pulp that give marmalade its distinctive flavor and body.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with the fruit's natural pectin, helps it set into a jelly.
Oranges
Optional addition whose pulp and juice add color to the marmalade.

The step that matters

Boil until it jellies. Marmalade sets only when sugar, acid and pectin reach the right concentration at a boil. Stopping too early leaves a runny spread, while boiling too long can make it stiff and dark.

“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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