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Dessert

Marmalade

A preserve made from Seville orange rinds, sugar, and water, boiled until it gels.

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 ↓

Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Wash and brush the oranges.

  2. Remove the seeds.

  3. Cut the peel into fine shreds.

  4. Soak the orange shreds in water for 24 hours.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Boil the mixture until the rinds are soft.

  2. Let it stand for another 24 hours.

  3. Add the sugar and boil until the marmalade jellies.

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
Supply the peel, which holds the pectin and bitter flavour that give marmalade its character.
Cane sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it set into a firm, spreadable gel as it boils.

The step that matters

Boil until the marmalade jellies. Sugar must be added and boiled long enough to concentrate the mixture until pectin and acid form a gel. Under-boiling leaves a runny set, while over-boiling can darken the flavour and make it stiff.

“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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