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 fruit
Boil the whole oranges in plenty of water for about 3 hours until easily pierced with a pin.
Peel the oranges, keeping the white pith, and place the peels in cold water.
Boil the peels in fresh water, discarding the first boiling water, for another hour.
Drain the peels and reserve the boiling liquid.
Bruise and squeeze the oranges to extract the juice, discarding the refuse.
Measure the juice and weigh the shredded peel.
Make the marmalade
For each pint of juice and pound of peel, add 1½ pounds of sugar and 1½ pints of reserved liquid.
Boil the sugar and liquid together for 20 minutes, then add the juice and boil until it forms a thick syrup, skimming off any scum.
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 + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Oranges
- Provide the peel, which adds bitterness and pectin, and the juice that gives the marmalade its body and tang.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled to a thick syrup, helps it set.
- Water
- Boiled with the peel and sugar to soften the peel and form the syrup base.
The step that matters
Boiling to a thick syrup. Marmalade sets only when enough sugar and pectin are concentrated by boiling. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dark.
“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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