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Dessert

Marmalade

A preserve made from oranges, sugar, and lemon, boiled until jelly-like and stored in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Soak the oranges in water for 24 hours.

  2. Transfer the oranges to a preserving pan with seeds in a muslin bag.

  3. Boil the pan until the oranges are tender.

  4. Remove the muslin bag.

  5. Weigh the fruit.

Make the marmalade

  1. Add 1 pound of sugar for each pound of fruit.

  2. Boil while stirring until the orange slices are clear and the syrup is jelly-like.

  3. During the last boil, add the strained juice and grated rinds of 2 or 3 lemons.

Jar and seal

  1. Pour the mixture into jars.

  2. Let the jars cool.

  3. Cover the jars with brandy paper and parchment.

  4. Seal the jars 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. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Oranges
Provide the bulk, bitter peel and seeds that supply pectin for setting.
Preserving sugar
Sweetens and concentrates the syrup, helping it thicken and set as a preserve.
Lemons
Add acidity and extra pectin, which helps the marmalade set and balances sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil until the syrup is jelly-like. Pectin, acid and sugar only set into a gel at the right concentration. Stopping too early leaves a runny marmalade, while boiling too long darkens the flavour and can make it stiff.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, 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.

More marmalade recipes

Orange 487Quince 144Peach 113Apple 87Pudding 74Pineapple 64 See all 21 →

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