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Dessert

Our Own Marmalade

A preserved fruit spread made from Seville oranges, sweet oranges, lemon, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Our Own Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Boil the Seville oranges in 2 quarts of water for 1½ hours.

  2. Pour away the water.

  3. Add 2 quarts of boiling water to the oranges.

  4. Boil again for 1 hour.

  5. Cut the oranges as finely as possible.

Make the marmalade

  1. For every pound of pulp, add 2 lbs of loaf sugar and ½ pint of the last boiling water.

  2. Squeeze the juice from the sweet oranges and lemon until you have nearly 1 pint.

  3. Remove the seeds from the juice.

  4. Add 1 lb of sugar to the juice.

  5. Combine the juice, water, and sugar in a preserving pan until the sugar melts.

  6. Add the orange pulp.

  7. Boil for about 25 minutes.

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 pectin and bitter peel help the marmalade set and give it its characteristic flavour.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it concentrates, helps it set and preserves it.
Sweet oranges
Add juice and sweetness that balance the bitterness of the Seville oranges.
Lemon
Adds acidity and extra pectin, which help the marmalade set.

The step that matters

Boil for about 25 minutes. The mixture must reach a rolling boil so enough water evaporates and the sugar and pectin concentrate to a point where the marmalade sets. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny; boiling too long can darken and harden it.

“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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