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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserved citrus spread made from sliced oranges, lemons, water, and sugar.

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 ↓

Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the oranges and lemons very thin, rind included.

  2. Cover the slices with 4 quarts of water and let stand for 30 hours.

Cook and set

  1. After 30 hours, boil the mixture for 2 hours.

  2. Add 8 lbs of sugar and boil for 1 hour longer.

  3. Pour the marmalade into glasses to 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

Navel oranges
Provide the bulk of the fruit, bitter peel and pulp that give marmalade its character.
Lemons
Add acidity and extra pectin-rich pith that helps the marmalade set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled down, helps it gel and keep.

The step that matters

Long boil after adding sugar. Sugar must be added to fruit that has already softened and boiled, then cooked until the mixture reaches gelling concentration. Too little boiling leaves the marmalade runny; too much can darken and toughen it.

“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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