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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from oranges, lemon, water, and sugar, boiled and cooled.

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 lemon in half, removing all seeds.

First soak and boil

  1. Add water and let stand for 24 hours.

  2. Boil for 1 hour, then add sugar while hot.

Second soak and boil

  1. Let stand for another 24 hours.

  2. Boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Jar and seal

  1. Pour into glasses, and when cold, cover with paraffin.

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

Oranges
Provide the bulk of the fruit, peel, and pectin for a firm, bitter-sweet preserve.
Lemon
Adds acidity and extra pectin, which help the marmalade set and keep its brightness.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens and, with boiling, thickens the mixture and helps it set and keep.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar while hot. Hot liquid dissolves sugar more fully and evenly, so no grainy crystals form. Boiling then concentrates sugar and pectin, which is what lets the marmalade set when cool.

“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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