Skip to main content
Dessert

Marmalade, Orange

A preserve made from Seville and sweet oranges, lemons, and sugar, simmered until it gels.

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

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 ↓

Marmalade, Orange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Divide the rinds of the oranges into quarters and remove them carefully.

  2. Place the rinds in a preserving pan and cover with cold water.

  3. Boil gently until tender.

  4. Divide the fruit into sections and scrape out the pulp.

  5. Soak the pips and fibrous skin in cold water.

  6. Once the rinds are tender, drain and shred them finely.

  7. Strain 2 pints of the liquid from boiling the rinds.

  8. Add the soaking water from the pips and skins.

Make the marmalade

  1. In a preserving pan, combine the sugar and strained water.

  2. Boil to a syrup.

  3. Add the shredded rinds and pulp to the syrup.

  4. Boil gently until the marmalade jellies on a cold plate.

Pot and seal

  1. Pour the marmalade into pots.

  2. Cover with paper brushed with egg white.

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. Lemon + sugartop 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).

Lemon and sugar 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 rinds and pips supply the bitterness and natural pectin that help the marmalade set.
Sweet oranges
Add sweetness and body to the fruit, balancing the sharp bitterness of the Seville oranges.
Lemons
Add acidity, which helps the pectin set and brightens the flavour.
Preserving sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with the acid and pectin, helps it set and keep.

The step that matters

Boil until the marmalade jellies on a cold plate. Setting depends on sugar, acid and pectin reaching the right concentration. Undercooked marmalade stays runny, while overcooking makes it stiff and dark. A cold plate test shows when it has reached a set point.

“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 orange marmalade recipes

Seville 44Pudding 17Clear 10Scotch 6Bitter 4 See all 487 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes