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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserved orange fruit and rind mixture made by boiling and simmering with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel half the oranges and cut the rind into shreds.

  2. Boil the shredded rind in three waters until tender, then set aside.

  3. Grate the rind of the remaining oranges, removing and discarding the thick white inner skin.

  4. Quarter the oranges, remove the seeds, and chop them into small pieces.

  5. Drain the juice without pressing the fruit over the sugar.

Make the marmalade

  1. Heat the juice, stirring until the sugar dissolves, adding a little water if the oranges are not very juicy.

  2. Boil and skim for five to six minutes.

  3. Add the boiled shreds and cook for ten minutes.

  4. Add the chopped fruit and grated peel, and boil for twenty minutes longer.

Jar and seal

  1. When cold, transfer to small jars, sealing with bladder or paper, and cover with cloths dipped in wax.

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

Oranges
Supply the bitter peel, pulp and juice that give marmalade its flavour and pectin-rich body.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled, thickens it and helps it set.

The step that matters

Boil the fruit with the sugar until it sets. Sugar and fruit pectin only gel at a high enough concentration and temperature, so boiling too briefly leaves the marmalade runny, while overcooking 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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