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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserved citrus spread made by boiling oranges, lemons, water, and sugar.

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 ↓

Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Slice the oranges very thin.

  2. Peel and slice the lemons.

  3. Cover the oranges and lemons with 5 quarts of water.

  4. Let the mixture sit for 24 hours.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Boil the mixture until the orange peel is tender.

  2. Let the mixture sit for another 24 hours.

  3. Add an equal amount of sugar.

  4. Boil until the mixture jells.

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

Oranges
Thin slices supply the bitter peel and pectin that give marmalade its body and characteristic flavour.
Lemons
Add extra acidity and pectin, helping the mixture set into a firm jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps it jell.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture jells. Setting depends on pectin, acid and sugar reaching the right concentration. Stopping too early leaves a runny marmalade, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull in 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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