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Orange Marmalade

A preserved citrus spread made from 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 thinly.

  2. Combine the sliced fruit with 1½ pints of cold water in a pot.

Soak and boil

  1. Boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Add sugar and finish

  1. In the morning, add 1½ lbs of sugar for each pint of mixture.

  2. Boil for an additional 40 minutes.

  3. Pour the marmalade into glasses.

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

Oranges
Supply the peel flavour and pectin that help the marmalade set.
Lemons
Add acidity and extra pectin, which support setting and brightness.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with fruit acid and pectin, helps it gel.

The step that matters

Boil for an additional 40 minutes after adding the sugar. Pectin, sugar and acid form a gel only when the mixture stays at a full boil long enough. Boiling too briefly leaves the marmalade runny.

“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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