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Dessert

Marmalade

A preserve made from sliced Seville oranges, sugar, lemons, and water, boiled and simmered until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the oranges very thinly and remove the seeds.

  2. Soak the sliced oranges in the cold water for 36 hours.

Cook

  1. Boil the soaked oranges gently for 2 hours.

  2. Add the sugar and boil gently for 2 more hours, skimming well.

  3. Add the lemon juice 20 minutes before finishing.

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
Supply the bitter peel and pectin that give marmalade its characteristic bitterness and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it set into a thick, spreadable gel.
Lemons
Add acidity and extra pectin, helping the marmalade set and balancing sweetness.

The step that matters

Skimming during the sugar boil. Foam and scum rise as the sugar dissolves and boils. Skimming removes them so the marmalade stays clear and fresh-tasting rather than cloudy or bitter from impurities.

“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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