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Dessert

A Very Fine Orange Marmalade

A marmalade made from Seville orange rinds, pulp, juice, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,706 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

A Very Fine Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Cut the Seville oranges in half and remove all the pulp and juice, discarding the seeds and white skin.

  2. Boil the rinds in hard water until soft, changing the water two or three times.

  3. Pound the softened rinds in a mortar.

Make the marmalade

  1. In a preserving pan, combine the pounded rinds with the juice and pulp, adding double the weight of sugar.

  2. Set over low heat and boil for about 30 minutes or until thickened.

Jar and seal

  1. Transfer to a jar and cover with a piece of paper soaked in brandy.

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 + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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 bitter peel and natural pectin that give marmalade its set and tang.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled down, helps it set and keep.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the marmalade and is applied to the paper covering the jar.

The step that matters

Boiling until thickened. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugar and pectin so the marmalade sets. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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