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Dessert

Marmalade

A preserved lemon fruit and peel mixture sweetened with sugar and flavored with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the lemons into quarters, thinly peel them, and remove the white pith and seeds from the pulp.

  2. Slice the pulp and cut the peel into thin shreds. Weigh the pulp and peel.

  3. For each pound, pour over 1 quart of filtered water and let it steep for 24 hours.

Make the marmalade

  1. Put the mixture into a preserving pan with the pips and white pith tied in a muslin bag. Boil slowly for 2 hours until tender.

  2. Remove the muslin bag, weigh the fruit, and for each pound, add 1½ pounds of coarsely crushed loaf sugar.

  3. Return to the preserving pan and boil gently for about 2 hours until clear.

Jar and store

  1. Turn the marmalade into jars, let it cool, then place a round of brandied paper in each jar, cover with parchment, and tie down tightly.

  2. Store in a dry cupboard.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + brandytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

Lemons
Provide the bright acidity and the bitter peel that give marmalade its character.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it boils, helps it set and turn clear.
Filtered water
Steeps the fruit so the peel softens before boiling.

The step that matters

Boiling until clear. Boiling with sugar concentrates the sugar and pectin until the marmalade sets. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while boiling too long can darken it and make it bitter.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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