Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserved citrus spread made from Seville and sweet oranges, lemons, water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Quarter the oranges and lemons, then remove the skin and seeds.

  2. Cover the seeds with water and let them soak overnight.

  3. Finely shred the skins and place them in a bowl with the pulp.

Soak and cook

  1. Add 3 pints of water for every pound of fruit and let it sit for 24 hours.

  2. Boil the mixture until tender, then let it sit for another 24 hours.

  3. Add the liquid from the soaked seeds to the fruit mixture.

  4. For every pound of fruit, add 1½ lbs of sugar.

  5. Boil for about 30 minutes or until the syrup is thick and transparent.

Jar

  1. Pour into jars and seal tightly.

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

Seville oranges
Their peel and pectin-rich pulp give marmalade its bitter flavour and help it set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled, thickens the syrup so it sets as it cools.
Lemons
Add acidity and extra pectin, which supports a firm set.

The step that matters

Boiling until the syrup is thick and transparent. Marmalade sets when enough sugar and pectin concentrate as water evaporates. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it dense and sticky.

“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 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes