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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from Seville oranges, sugar, water, honey, and orange rind, boiled until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and honey are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,068 recipes. Both carry pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Weigh the sugar and oranges.

  2. Score the skin of the oranges and remove it in quarters.

  3. Boil the quarters in a muslin bag in water until soft and easily pierced.

  4. Cut the rind into chips about 1 inch long and as thin as possible.

  5. Remove any excess white pulp from the rind chips.

  6. Peel the oranges and boil the rind in water until tender.

  7. Cut the tender rind into strips.

  8. Remove the seeds from the juice and pulp.

Cook and pot

  1. Combine the seed-free juice and pulp with the honey and rind chips in a preserving pan.

  2. Boil all together for about 3 hours, or until the marmalade reaches the proper consistency.

  3. Pour the marmalade into pots.

  4. Cover with bladders once cool.

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 + honeytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,068 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  3. Sugar + honeytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,932 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
Supply pectin and bitter acidity that help the marmalade set and give it its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, at high concentration, helps the marmalade gel and keep.
Juice and pulp of seville oranges
Provide acidity and pectin, which help the marmalade set.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture, giving a softer, rounder sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil until the proper consistency. Setting depends on pectin, acid and sugar concentrating as water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves the marmalade runny, while boiling too long can darken it and make it stiff.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, honey. 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.

More orange marmalade recipes

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

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