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 ↓
Orange Marmalade
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Slice the oranges thinly and remove the pips.
Pour the cold water over the oranges and place the pips in a separate basin, pouring boiling water over them.
Let all stand for 24 hours.
Cook
Boil the fruit and water rapidly for 2 hours, allowing it to reduce significantly.
Strain the juice and jelly from the pips and add it to the fruit with the sugar.
Boil everything together for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
For added flavor, include the juice of 12 sweet oranges.
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 oranges
- Provide the bitter peel, pectin-rich pips and tart juice that give marmalade its flavor and set.
- Preserving sugar
- Sweetens the marmalade and helps it set into a gel as it cooks down.
The step that matters
Boil the fruit and water rapidly for 2 hours. The long rapid boil softens the peel and reduces the liquid so the pectin and sugar concentrate enough to set. Stopping early leaves a runny marmalade.
“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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