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Dessert

Scotch Marmalade

A citrus preserve made from Seville oranges, sugar, and water, simmered until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Scotch Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the rind of the oranges into quarters.

  2. Peel the rind off.

  3. Cut the chips into small pieces.

  4. Remove the seeds from the pulp.

  5. Place the pulp and chips in an earthen pan.

  6. Pour the boiling water over them.

  7. Let the mixture stand for 12 hours.

Cook and set

  1. Transfer the mixture to a preserving pan.

  2. Boil until the chips are soft.

  3. Gradually add the sugar.

  4. Continue boiling until it jellies.

  5. Strain the seeds from the water using a hair sieve.

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

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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, pulp and natural pectin that give the marmalade its flavour and set.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, once boiled, helps the mixture gel as it sets.

The step that matters

Continue boiling until it jellies. Pectin sets only when enough sugar and acid are concentrated by boiling. Stopping too early leaves a runny marmalade, while boiling too long can make it stiff and dull in flavour.

“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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