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Orange Flower Marmalade Marmalade De Fleurs D' Oranges

A marmalade made from orange flowers, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 Flower Marmalade Marmalade De Fleurs D' Oranges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flowers

  1. Pick and rinse the orange flowers in fresh water; you will have about 1 pound after picking.

  2. Drain the flowers.

  3. Boil the flowers in water for 1 minute.

  4. Drain the flowers again.

  5. Place the flowers in fresh boiling water with lemon juice until they break easily with your fingers.

  6. Remove the flowers and cool them in cold water with lemon juice.

  7. Drain the flowers.

  8. Press the flowers in a cloth to remove excess water.

Make the marmalade

  1. Beat the flowers in a marble mortar.

  2. Add lemon juice as needed.

  3. Clarify the sugar in a small pan.

  4. Bring the sugar to the 'perle' stage.

  5. Gradually mix half of the sugar into the beaten flowers with a spatula.

  6. Heat the remaining sugar to the 'petit souffle' stage.

  7. Add the heated sugar to the marmalade, stirring continuously.

  8. Heat the mixture without boiling.

  9. Transfer the mixture to 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

Orange flowers
Provide the main floral aroma and the delicate bitter flavour of the marmalade.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps the marmalade set.
Fine sugar
Adds sweetness and, when cooked to stages, helps preserve and set the marmalade.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture without boiling. Boiling concentrates the sugar too quickly and can darken the mixture and dull the delicate orange flower aroma. Gentle heat keeps the flavour fresh and the texture smooth.

“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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