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Marmalade, Orange

A preserve made from Seville orange peel and pulp, sweetened with sugar and lemon juice.

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 ↓

Marmalade, Orange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the Seville oranges in half.

  2. Remove the pulp and skins.

  3. Boil the peels in a large quantity of water until soft.

  4. Change the water two or three times.

  5. When cool, cut the peels into thin strips.

  6. Separate the pulp from the skin and seeds.

  7. Weigh both the peel and pulp.

Make the marmalade

  1. For every pound of peel and pulp, use an equal weight of sugar.

  2. Boil the pulp gently with the sugar until it forms a syrup.

  3. Add the peels.

  4. Boil gently for half an hour, stirring constantly.

  5. Remove any thick scum that rises while boiling.

Store

  1. When nearly cold, store the marmalade in 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. Sugar + lemontop 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).

Sugar and lemon 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

Seville oranges
Provide the peel, pulp and seeds that supply the bitter flavour and natural pectin for setting.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled, thickens the syrup so it sets.

The step that matters

Boil the pulp with the sugar until it forms a syrup. Sugar must dissolve fully and the mixture must reach a sufficiently concentrated syrup, since sugar and pectin together allow the marmalade to gel as it cools. Gentle boiling avoids scorching the sugar.

“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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