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 oranges
Weigh the sugar and oranges.
Score the skin of the oranges and remove it in quarters.
Boil the orange quarters in a muslin bag in water until soft, about 2 hours.
Cut the rind into chips about 1 inch long and thin.
Remove excess white stringy pulp.
Split open the oranges, scrape out the pulp and juice, discarding the white pith and seeds.
Make and jar the marmalade
Make a syrup by boiling the sugar and water until clear.
Add the chips, pulp, and juice.
Boil the marmalade for 20 minutes to ½ hour, removing scum as it rises.
Pour the marmalade into jars and let it cool.
Cover with bladders or tissue paper brushed with egg white.
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.
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Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Seville oranges
- Provide the bitter peel, pulp and pectin that give marmalade its flavour and set.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the marmalade and, with the fruit, helps it set and keeps it preserved.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar into a syrup and helps soften the peel during cooking.
The step that matters
Boil the marmalade for 20 minutes to ½ hour, removing scum as it rises. Boiling must be long enough to reach the setting point, since pectin and sugar need heat and concentration to gel. Skimming scum keeps the marmalade clear and fresh-tasting.
“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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