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Grape Fruit Marmalade

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

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 preserving 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 body and bitter-sweet citrus flavor.
Grapefruit
Adds pectin-rich pulp and rind plus a sharp bitterness that gives the marmalade its character.
Lemons
Add acidity and natural pectin, helping the marmalade set and keeping its flavor bright.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with the citrus pectin and acid, helps it gel and hold its shape.

The step that matters

Cooking until the mixture jellies. Sugar, citrus pectin and acid must reach the right concentration to gel. Undercooking leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull in flavor.

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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