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Grape Fruit Marmalade

A marmalade made from grapefruit, oranges, and lemons with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Grape Fruit Marmalade

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 ↓

Grape Fruit Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Extract the juice and pulp from the oranges, grapefruit, and lemons, discarding all seeds and pith.

  2. Chop the rind using a meat chopper.

  3. Mix the juice, pulp, and chopped rind thoroughly, then add 4 quarts of water.

  4. Place the mixture in a cool place overnight.

Cook and set

  1. The next day, transfer the mixture to a kettle and cook until the rind is transparent, about 2 hours.

  2. Add 10 lbs of granulated sugar and cook until the mixture jellies or holds up the rind.

  3. Pour into jelly glasses and cover with paraffin after a day or two.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Orange + grapefruittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together233 recipes

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

  3. Grapefruit + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  5. 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

Oranges
Provide the bulk of the juice, pulp, and rind, giving the marmalade its base flavor and body.
Grapefruit
Adds bitter-sharp citrus flavor and rind that becomes tender and translucent during cooking.
Lemons
Add acidity, which helps the mixture set into a jelly and brightens the flavor.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps it jell.

The step that matters

Cooking until the mixture jellies. Sugar must be added before the mixture is cooked to the point of setting. Pectin and acid from the citrus form a gel only at high sugar concentration and temperature, so undercooking leaves a runny marmalade while overcooking can make it stiff and dull.

Swap the grapefruit

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

  1. Grapefruitthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Vanillafits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, sugar. 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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