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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

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

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 the fruit

  1. Slice the oranges and lemons very thin, removing all seeds.

  2. Steep the slices in 4 quarts of cold water for 24 hours.

  3. Boil the seeds in 2 quarts of water for 3 hours, then add to the oranges.

Cook the marmalade

  1. In a preserving kettle, combine everything and boil slowly for 2 hours.

  2. Add 12 pounds of sugar and boil rapidly for 1 hour.

  3. Before removing from heat, add the juice of 2 lemons.

Jar

  1. Pour into tumblers and let cool.

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
Supply the bitter peel and pulp that give marmalade its characteristic flavour and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it concentrates, helps it set into a spreadable gel.
Lemons
Add acidity and natural pectin that help the marmalade set and balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar stage rapidly. Sugar must be dissolved and boiled hard enough to concentrate the mixture so pectin can form a gel. Too little boiling leaves the marmalade runny.

“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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