Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserved citrus preserve made from oranges, salt, sugar, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peel

  1. Peel the oranges, quarter them, and remove seeds and inner skins.

  2. Soak the peel overnight in water with dissolved salt.

  3. Boil the peel in clear water until tender, then chop finely.

Make the marmalade

  1. Add the juice and pulp of the oranges to the chopped peel.

  2. Weigh the mixture and add an equal amount of white sugar.

  3. Bring to a slow boil and cook for 30 minutes, stirring carefully.

Jar and seal

  1. Pour into pint glass jars or jelly tumblers.

  2. Seal with a round of paper dipped in unbeaten egg, pressing it firmly over the glass.

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).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Orange + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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, juice and pulp that form the marmalade's body and bitter flavour.
White sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it set into a thick, spreadable texture.
Coarse sea salt
Dissolved in the soaking water to draw out bitterness from the peel.
Unbeaten egg
Used on the paper seal to help it stick firmly over the jar.

The step that matters

Stirring during the slow boil. Sugar is added before cooking, so the mixture can scorch on the bottom of the pan if not stirred carefully. Scorched sugar turns bitter and dark, and a gentle, steady boil helps the peel soften and the sugar dissolve evenly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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.

More orange marmalade recipes

Seville 44Pudding 17Clear 10Scotch 6Bitter 4 See all 487 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes