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Dessert

Oraxge Marmalade

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Oraxge Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Grate the rinds of the oranges and cut them into quarters, removing the flesh and pips.

  2. Soak the rinds in cold water overnight, then boil for 20 minutes, changing the water.

  3. Once tender, drain the rinds, slice them thin, and add 8 ounces of rinds for each pound of pulp and juice.

Cook and jar

  1. Combine the pulp, juice, rinds, and sugar in a preserving pan.

  2. Heat slowly, then boil for 30 minutes, skimming off any foam.

  3. Pour the marmalade into 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 + 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
Supply the bitter peel, pectin-rich pulp and juice that give marmalade its flavour and set.
Lemons
Add extra acidity and pectin to help the marmalade set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it set and keep by binding water.

The step that matters

Heat slowly, then boil. Sugar must dissolve fully before a rolling boil, or crystals can form. Boiling too long or too little affects whether the pectin and sugar reach a set.

“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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