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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserved citrus spread made from oranges, lemon, water, and sugar.

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 ↓

Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the oranges and lemon into quarters and remove the seeds.

  2. Soak the cut fruit in a little of the water.

  3. Slice the fruit, including the rind and pulp, very thinly.

  4. Soak the sliced fruit in the remaining water for 24 hours.

  5. Strain the seeds and add the soaking water to the sliced fruit.

Cook and set

  1. Boil the mixture briskly for about 14 hours, or until the rind is tender.

  2. Add the sugar and boil for another hour.

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. Lemon + sugartop 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).

Lemon and sugar 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

Bitter oranges
Provide the sharp, bitter flavor and pectin-rich peel that gives marmalade its character.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it set into a firm, spreadable gel.
Lemon
Adds extra acidity and pectin, which help the marmalade set.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar in only after the rind is tender. Sugar added to tough peel can toughen it and slow softening, so the rind should be fully tender first. Once the sugar dissolves and the mixture reaches a boil, pectin and acid work together to form a gel.

“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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