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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from navel oranges, lemon, 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. Cut off the thick ends of the oranges, halve and quarter them lengthwise, then slice very thin crosswise.

  2. Remove all seeds and add 3 pints of cold water for every pound of fruit.

  3. Let this mixture stand for 24 hours.

Cook and rest

  1. Boil for 45 minutes.

  2. Let it stand for another 24 hours.

  3. Weigh the mixture again and add 1 pound of sugar for every pound of fruit and juice.

Finish and set

  1. Add the juice of 2 more lemons while boiling.

  2. Continue to boil until it jellies.

  3. Do not drain off any of the first water, but skim carefully both times the fruit is boiled.

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 peel and pulp that supply pectin, the natural agent that lets the marmalade set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the marmalade set and keep well.
Lemons
Add acidity that helps pectin form a gel and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Continue to boil until it jellies. Pectin, sugar and acid only form a firm gel when the mixture reaches the right concentration. Stopping early leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and darken the flavour.

“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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