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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

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

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 the fruit

  1. Cut the oranges and lemons very fine and remove the seeds.

  2. Cover the fruit with 6 quarts of water and let it stand for 24 hours.

Cook and rest

  1. Cook the mixture until the rinds are soft.

  2. Remove from heat and let it stand for another 24 hours.

Set the marmalade

  1. Take 1 pint of the mixture and 1 pint of sugar, and boil for 20 minutes or until thick enough to pour into jars.

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
Their peel and pith supply pectin, which helps the marmalade set, and bitter flavour.
Lemons
Their peel and juice add pectin and acidity, which help the marmalade set and brighten the flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, once boiled, helps the mixture thicken and set.

The step that matters

Boil until thick enough to pour into jars. Pectin from the peel sets the marmalade only when sugar and acid are concentrated by boiling. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff and dark.

“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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