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Dessert

Marmalade Jelly

A preserved orange marmalade made by boiling Seville oranges, water, lemons, and sugar until it sets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Marmalade Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Wipe the oranges and cut them in half.

  2. Place the oranges in a saucepan with the water and boil for about 45 minutes.

  3. Strain the juice from the mixture.

  4. Bring the juice to a boil and let it boil for a few minutes.

Make the jelly

  1. Measure the juice and add ¾ pound of sugar for each pint of juice.

  2. Combine the juice and sugar in a preserving pan and boil until it jellies when cooled.

  3. If it does not set, boil longer.

Jar

  1. Pour the jelly into small jars and cover when cool.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Seville oranges
Provide the juice along with natural pectin and acidity that help the jelly set.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and, once dissolved and boiled, helps the jelly set and keeps it preserved.
Lemons
Add extra acidity and pectin to support the setting of the jelly.

The step that matters

Boiling until it jellies. The jelly sets only when enough sugar, pectin and acid are concentrated by boiling. Stopping too early leaves a runny result, so test by cooling a spoonful and boil longer if it does not set.

“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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