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Orange Marmalade

A preserved fruit spread made from sliced oranges, lemons, grapefruit, water, and sugar, boiled and allowed to set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 the fruit

  1. Slice the fruit very thin and remove the seeds.

  2. Weigh the sliced fruit.

  3. For every pound (or 2 cups), add 3 cups of water.

  4. Place the mixture in a crock and let it stand for 24 hours.

Cook and rest

  1. After 24 hours, boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

  2. Return it to the crock and let it sit for another 24 hours.

Add sugar and set

  1. Measure the mixture.

  2. For every pint, add 2¼ cups of sugar.

  3. Boil until it slightly jellies.

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

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

  3. Lemon + grapefruittop 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 fruit, along with their peel, which contributes bitterness and body.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens flavor and helps the marmalade set.
Grapefruit
Add extra peel and pectin-rich pith, contributing bitterness and aiding setting.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with heat and acid, helps it thicken into a gel.

The step that matters

Boil until it slightly jellies. Sugar and fruit pectin set only at the right concentration. Undercooking leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it dark and stiff.

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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