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Dessert

Orange Marmalade,

A preserved sweet spread made from Seville oranges, lemons, 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

  1. Cut the oranges and lemons into very thin slices, removing the seeds.

  2. Place the seeds in a bowl with ½ cup of the cold water.

  3. Put the sliced fruit into the remaining 11½ cups of cold water and let it sit for 24 hours.

Cook

  1. Transfer the mixture to a preserving pan and boil slowly until tender, about 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Add the sugar and boil gently until the mixture is clear.

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. Sugar + lemontop 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).

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

Seville oranges
Their peel and pectin give the marmalade its bitter flavour and help it set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it set and keep its preserved texture.
Lemons
Add extra acidity and pectin, supporting the set and balancing the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar in gently until the mixture is clear. Boiling too hard after adding sugar can darken the marmalade and break down its pectin, weakening the set. Gentle heat dissolves the sugar evenly and keeps the peel clear and tender.

“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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