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 ↓
Transparent Marmalade
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Prepare the rinds by lightly rasping and boiling them until tender.
In a pot, combine the pulp and juice of the oranges with the prepared rinds.
Make the marmalade
Add sugar to the mixture and stir well.
Boil the mixture for 1 hour until it thickens into a syrup.
Pound a portion of the rinds and stir them back into the preserve.
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
- Seville orange rinds
- Provide bitter peel flavour and chewy texture, and pectin-rich material that helps the preserve set.
- Seville orange pulp and juice
- Supply acidity and pectin, which help the marmalade thicken and set.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the preserve and, when boiled, thickens it into a syrup and helps it set.
The step that matters
Boil until the mixture thickens into a syrup. Sugar and pectin must be concentrated by boiling to reach the setting point. Too little boiling leaves the marmalade runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and darken its flavour.
“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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