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Dessert

Clear Orange Marmalade

A clear marmalade made from Seville orange pulp, juice, rinds, and sugar, cooked until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Clear Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Prepare the oranges by removing the pips and skin, then boil the rinds in water until tender.

  2. Drain the rinds and scrape off the white skin and fibers while warm.

  3. Pound the rinds to a paste and blend with the pulp and juice gradually to avoid lumps.

  4. Add a quarter pint of water that has soaked the seeds for 1-2 hours.

  5. Strain through a coarse sieve.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Boil the mixture without sugar for 15-20 minutes.

  2. Add half of the sugar and boil for 10-15 minutes.

  3. Add the remaining sugar and boil for another 15-20 minutes until thick and clear.

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 orange pulp and juice
Provides the pectin and acidity that help the marmalade set.
Orange rinds
Supply the bitter peel texture and aroma that give marmalade its character.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled, helps it thicken and set.
Water
Extracts pectin from the seeds and rinds and loosens the mixture for cooking.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar in portions. Sugar added to a boiling mixture too early or all at once can slow reduction and cloud the marmalade. Adding it in stages, with boiling between additions, helps it dissolve and the mixture reach a thick, clear set.

“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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