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Dessert

Scotch Marmalade

A marmalade made from bitter oranges, sugar, and water, boiled and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bitter orange and orange work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 23 recipes. Both carry acetal, which smells cream, earthy. The science ↓

Scotch Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Weigh the oranges.

  2. For every pound of fruit, use 14 lbs of sugar.

  3. Peel 9 oranges very thinly.

  4. Clip the peel with scissors.

  5. Quarter the oranges.

  6. Save the seeds.

Cook the seeds and fruit

  1. Boil the seeds in 1 quart of water for 30 minutes.

  2. Boil 1 quart of water for 45 minutes for every pound of fruit.

  3. Strain the boiled water.

Cook the peel

  1. Boil the clipped peel in 1 pint of water for 25 minutes.

  2. Pour off the water from the peel.

Finish and jar

  1. Combine the strained water from the seeds with the clipped peel in a kettle.

  2. Boil hard for 15 minutes.

  3. Pour the marmalade into jars.

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. Bitter orange + orangetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetal (cream, earthy).

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

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

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

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

Bitter oranges
Provide the fruit, peel and seeds that supply the marmalade's bitter flavour and natural pectin.
Sugar
Sweetens and, with boiling, helps the marmalade set and keeps it preserved.
Orange peel
Adds bitter aroma and chewy texture to the finished marmalade.

The step that matters

Boil hard for 15 minutes. Boiling hard concentrates the sugar and pectin so the marmalade can set. A short boil leaves it runny, while an overlong boil can darken the colour and make the flavour harsh.

Swap the bitter orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Bitter orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange. 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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