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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserved fruit spread made from oranges, lemon juice, 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. Wash the oranges and slice them thinly, including the rind, discarding the first and last slices.

  2. In a bowl, add the sliced oranges and lemon juice, cover with cold water, and let stand for 24 hours.

Cook and set

  1. Boil the mixture without draining until the rinds are tender, then remove from heat and let sit for another 24 hours.

  2. Add 1 cup of sugar for every cup of the pulp and boil slowly until the marmalade is clear and thick.

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
Provide the bitter rind and pulp that give marmalade its characteristic flavor and pectin for setting.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled down, helps it thicken and set.
Lemons
Add acidity that supports pectin setting and brightens the flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling until the marmalade is clear and thick. Sugar must be added in the stated ratio and the mixture boiled slowly until it reaches the setting point. Too little boiling leaves it runny; overcooking can darken and toughen the set.

“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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