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Dessert

Marmalade

A preserve made from Seville oranges, water, and sugar, simmered until jelly-like and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Wash the Seville oranges thoroughly.

  2. Slice the oranges and remove the seeds.

  3. Place the sliced oranges in a pot with water and bring to a boil.

  4. Simmer until the oranges are soft.

Make the marmalade

  1. Measure the mixture and add an equal amount of sugar.

  2. Stir until the sugar dissolves and boil until it reaches a jelly-like consistency.

  3. Pour into sterilized jars and seal.

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 + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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
Supply the bitter peel and pectin that give marmalade its flavour and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the bitter fruit and helps the mixture gel when boiled to setting point.

The step that matters

Boiling to a jelly-like set. Boiling must reach the gel point, where the sugar and pectin set on cooling. Stopping early leaves a runny marmalade; boiling too long can darken the flavour and make it overly stiff.

“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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