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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from sliced oranges, lemon, water, and sugar, boiled and jarred.

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 lemon well, then slice them as thin as possible into half‑round slices.

  2. Weigh the sliced fruit and add 3 pints of water for each pound of fruit.

  3. Let the mixture stand in a cool place for 24 hours.

Boil and rest

  1. Boil the mixture rapidly for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  2. Let it stand for another 24 hours.

Add sugar and finish

  1. Weigh the mixture again, add the juice of 1 lemon, and place it on the stove.

  2. Just before it boils, add 1.5 pounds of warm sugar for each pound of fruit.

  3. Boil for 45 minutes as fast as possible, stirring as needed.

  4. Remove from the stove and pour into jars.

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 bulk of the fruit, peel and pectin that help the marmalade set.
Lemon
Adds acidity and extra pectin, which helps the marmalade set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, in high concentration, helps it set and keep.

The step that matters

Boiling fast after adding the sugar. Sugar must dissolve before the rapid boil. A sustained fast boil evaporates water so the sugar, acid and pectin reach the concentration needed to set. A weak boil 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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