Skip to main content
Dessert

Clear Orange Marmalade

A clear marmalade made from Seville oranges, water, orange rinds, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Clear Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash and wipe the oranges clean, then remove the rinds in quarters.

  2. Boil the rinds in a large quantity of water until tender.

  3. Drain the rinds and scrape off the white skin and fibers while warm.

  4. Pound the rinds to a paste.

  5. Blend the paste with the pulp and juice gradually to avoid lumps.

  6. Soak the seeds in ¼ pint of water for 1–2 hours.

  7. Mix the seed water into the paste.

Cook to a clear set

  1. Boil the mixture quickly without sugar for 15–20 minutes.

  2. Add half of the sugar and boil for 10–15 minutes.

  3. Add the remaining sugar and boil for another 15–20 minutes until thick and 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 + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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
Provide the bitter peel, pulp and juice that give marmalade its characteristic flavour and pectin.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, once dissolved and boiled, helps it set to a thick, clear gel.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar in portions. Sugar added to the fruit before it has softened can toughen the peel and slow pectin extraction. Adding it in stages after a quick boil helps the marmalade reach setting point with a clear, thick texture.

“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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes