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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserved citrus spread made from sliced oranges, lemons, grapefruit, water, and sugar, boiled and jellied.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 fruit very thin and remove the seeds.

  2. Weigh the sliced fruit.

  3. For every pound (or 2 cups), add 3 cups of water.

  4. Place the mixture in a crock.

  5. Let it stand for 24 hours.

Boil and rest

  1. After 24 hours, put the crock on the fire.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Return the mixture to the crock.

  4. Let it sit for another 24 hours.

Add sugar and finish

  1. Measure the mixture. For every pint, add 2 1/4 cups of sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture until it slightly jellies.

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. Orange + grapefruittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + grapefruittop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. 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
Supply the bulk of the fruit, along with peel and pectin that help the marmalade set.
Lemons
Add acidity and pectin, which brighten the flavor and help the marmalade gel.
Grapefruit
Add pectin and a bitter edge that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, at high concentration, helps the pectin set into a gel.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it slightly jellies. Pectin sets only when enough sugar and acid are present at a high concentration. Stopping too early leaves the marmalade runny, while overcooking makes it stiff and dull.

Swap the grapefruit

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lemon, sugar):

  1. Grapefruitthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Vanillafits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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