Skip to main content
Dessert

Rhubarb and Orange Marmalade

A marmalade made from oranges, lemons, rhubarb, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Rhubarb and Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel the oranges and lemons, then chop them finely.

  2. Measure equal parts of the chopped fruit and sugar.

  3. Combine the fruit and sugar in a pot and boil for about 20 minutes.

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 + rhubarbtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Lemon + rhubarbtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together546 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  5. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 main citrus flavour, aroma and bitterness from the peel, plus juice for acidity.
Lemons
Add acidity and natural pectin, which helps the marmalade set.
Rhubarb
Adds tartness and bulk to the fruit mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with heat, helps the marmalade thicken and keep.

The step that matters

Boiling the fruit and sugar. The mixture must boil long enough to reach its setting point. Too short a boil leaves it runny, while overcooking can darken and scorch the sugar and dull the flavour.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Peppermintfits about as well
  4. Rhubarbthe original

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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesRhubarb PieRhubarb Pie152 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes