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Dessert

Genuine Scotch Marmalade

A marmalade made from bitter oranges, water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Bitter orange and sugar work together. They rank in the top 41% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14 recipes. The science ↓

Genuine Scotch Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the rind of the oranges into quarters and peel it off.

  2. Remove some of the spongy white skin if a thinner marmalade is desired.

  3. Cut the rind into thin chips, about half an inch long.

  4. Divide the pulp into small bits.

  5. Remove the seeds.

  6. Steep the seeds in part of the water (1 quart) for the marmalade.

  7. Put the chips and pulp into a deep dish.

  8. Pour boiling water over them.

  9. Let them sit for 12 to 14 hours.

Make the marmalade

  1. Transfer the mixture to a preserving pan.

  2. Boil until the chips are tender.

  3. Gradually add the pounded sugar.

  4. Boil the marmalade until it jellies.

Add the seed jelly

  1. Strain the water from the steeped seeds through a sieve.

  2. Work the seeds with a spoon to extract a clear jelly.

  3. Add the jelly to the fruit mixture when it is first set on the fire.

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. Bitter orange + sugartop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bitter oranges
Provide the bitter peel and pulp that give marmalade its flavour and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, once boiled, helps it set into a jelly.
Seeds (in the method)
Their steeped extract adds natural pectin, helping the marmalade jell.

The step that matters

Boil the marmalade until it jellies. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugar and pectin until the mixture sets. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while boiling too long can make it dark and 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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