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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from Seville oranges, lemons, sugar, and water, boiled until set.

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

  1. Slice the oranges and lemons as finely as possible.

  2. Add 6 cups of cold water for every pound of fruit.

  3. Let the mixture stand for three days.

Cook

  1. Boil the mixture until the fruit is perfectly tender.

  2. Weigh the fruit again.

  3. Add 1 cup of sugar for every pound of fruit.

  4. Boil for about an hour, or until the marmalade sets when tested on a cold plate.

Jar and store

  1. Transfer the marmalade to jars.

  2. Seal the jars tightly.

  3. Store the jars in a cool place.

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
Provide pectin, acidity and bitter peel flavor that help the marmalade set.
Lemons
Add extra pectin and acidity, supporting the gel and balancing sweetness.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and, when boiled down, helps the marmalade thicken and set.

The step that matters

Boiling until the marmalade sets. Pectin, acid and sugar only form a gel at the right concentration. Stopping too early leaves runny marmalade, while boiling too long can make it stiff or dark. Testing a spoonful on a cold plate shows whether it has reached the set point.

“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.

More orange marmalade recipes

Seville 44Pudding 17Clear 10Scotch 6Bitter 4 See all 487 →

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