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 ↓
Orantge Marmalade
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Peel the oranges carefully and remove some of the white pith.
Boil the rinds in water for 2 hours, changing the water three times to reduce bitterness.
Break the pulp into small pieces, remove all the seeds, and cut the boiled rind into chips.
Make the marmalade
In a pot, combine the sugar and water to make a syrup; boil and skim until clear.
Add the pulp and rind chips to the syrup and boil together for 20 minutes to 1 hour.
For improved flavor, add the juice and grated rind of 2 lemons with the pulp and chips.
Pot and cover
Pour the marmalade into pots and let it cool.
Cover with bladders or tissue paper brushed with egg white.
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 + lemontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,634 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Provide the bitter peel, pulp and pectin-rich seeds that give marmalade its character and set.
- Fine loaf sugar
- Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled, helps it thicken and set.
- Lemons
- Add extra acidity and aroma, and their pectin supports setting.
The step that matters
Boiling the rinds in changed water. Rinds must be boiled until tender, with water changed to lessen bitterness; under-cooked rind stays tough and overly bitter in the finished 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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