Skip to main content
Dessert

Marmalade

A preserve made from orange peel, juice, lemon juice, sugar, and water, boiled until thick.

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

Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peel

  1. Place the orange peel in a preserving kettle and cover with fresh cold water.

  2. Boil for 1 hour.

  3. Change the water and continue boiling until the peel is tender enough to pierce with a straw.

  4. Drain the water and cut the peel into fine shreds.

Make the marmalade

  1. Squeeze the oranges and combine the juice with the juice of 4 lemons.

  2. Weigh the shredded peel and juice.

  3. For every pound of peel and juice, use 1.5 pounds of lump sugar.

  4. Add 1 pint of water for each pound of sugar and boil for 15 minutes.

  5. Add the fruit juice to the syrup.

  6. Boil until thick.

  7. Stir in the shredded peel.

  8. Boil for 20 minutes or until the marmalade jellies.

Jar and set

  1. Pour into jars.

  2. Let them remain uncovered for 1-2 days.

  3. Seal the 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 peel
Provides the bitter rind pieces and texture that give marmalade its character.
Orange juice
Adds liquid and fruit acidity that help the marmalade set.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it cooks thick, helps it gel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and natural pectin that help the marmalade set.

The step that matters

Boil until the marmalade jellies. Setting depends on sugar concentration and pectin reaching the gel point. Undercooked marmalade stays runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dark.

“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.

More orange marmalade recipes

Seville 44Pudding 17Clear 10Scotch 6Bitter 4 See all 487 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes