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Dessert

Scottish Marmalade

A preserve made from Seville oranges, their pulp, juice, and parings boiled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Scottish Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peel

  1. Pare the skins of the oranges thinly, avoiding the white part.

  2. Cut the parings into small strips and pieces.

  3. Boil the parings in enough water to cover them for 1 hour to remove bitterness.

  4. Strain the parings and set aside.

Make the marmalade

  1. Quarter the oranges, scrape out the pulp and juice, discarding the white skins, films, and seeds.

  2. Combine the pulp, juice, strained parings, and sugar in a pan.

  3. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

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 peel, which gives the marmalade its bitter flavour and texture, and the pulp and juice for body and tartness.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it boils, helps the mixture thicken and set.

The step that matters

Boil the parings for 1 hour. Boiling the peel in water for a full hour softens it and draws out some of its bitterness. Skipping or shortening this step leaves the peel tough and the marmalade harsher in flavour.

“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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