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Marmalade

A clear marmalade made from Seville oranges, lemons, sugar, and spring water.

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 the fruit

  1. Cut the Seville oranges in half.

  2. Remove the pulp with a teaspoon handle, leaving the thin skins in the peel.

  3. Tear out the skins.

  4. Place the skins in cold water; you may leave them overnight or proceed immediately.

  5. Drain the peels.

  6. Boil the peels in a good quantity of cold spring water until tender.

  7. Cut the lemons into very thin slices.

Make the marmalade

  1. Add the sliced lemons to the pulp, ensuring all seeds are removed.

  2. Add 1 pound and 1/4 cup of sugar for every pound of marmalade.

  3. Heat the mixture gradually.

  4. Boil gently for 20 minutes, stirring gently until it becomes transparent.

  5. Add the juice of 2-3 sweet oranges for every dozen Seville oranges for a juicier marmalade.

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

Seville oranges
Their peel and pectin-rich pulp give marmalade its bitter flavour and natural set.
Lemons
Add acidity and extra pectin, helping the marmalade set and balancing sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled, helps it thicken and set.
Sweet oranges
Add juice and moisture, making the marmalade juicier and softer in flavour.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 20 minutes, stirring gently until transparent. Boiling too hard or too long can darken the marmalade and break down its peel and pectin, while too short a boil leaves it runny. Gentle, steady heat lets the peel soften and the sugar concentrate so the mixture sets.

“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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