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Dessert

Orange and Pear Marmalade

A marmalade made from oranges and pears with sugar and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and pear work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 323 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Orange and Pear Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel the pears but leave the oranges unpeeled.

  2. Chop the oranges and pears using a food chopper.

Cook and jar

  1. Combine the chopped fruit in a pot with 5 cups of sugar and a little water.

  2. Cook the mixture until it reaches the right consistency.

  3. Seal the marmalade in 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 + peartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 bitter peel and acidity that give marmalade its characteristic flavour.
Pears
Add bulk and mild sweetness, softening into the fruit base as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps the mixture thicken to a spreadable set as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking to the right consistency. Cooking must continue until the sugar and fruit pectin concentrate enough to gel. Stopping early leaves a runny marmalade, while overcooking can make it stiff and caramelised.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, 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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