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 ↓
Marmalade
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Boil the whole oranges in plenty of water for about 3 hours until easily pierced.
Peel the oranges, keeping the white pith.
Place the skins in cold water.
Boil the skins in fresh water.
Drain the skins.
Repeat boiling for another hour.
Bruise the fruit and squeeze it to extract the juice.
Discard the refuse.
Measure the juice.
Weigh the shredded peel.
Make the marmalade
For each pint of juice and pound of peel, use 1½ pounds of sugar and 1½ pints of the reserved liquid.
Boil the sugar and liquid for 20 minutes.
Add the juice.
Boil until it forms a thick syrup, skimming off any scum.
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.
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Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Oranges
- Supply the peel, pith and juice that give marmalade its bitter flavour and body.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken into a syrup as it boils.
The step that matters
Boil until it forms a thick syrup. Boiling off water concentrates the sugar until the mixture sets when cooled. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff. Skimming removes scum that would cloud the finished marmalade.
“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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