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Sauce

Marmalade Sauce

A sauce made from potato flour, orange marmalade, water, orange rind and juice, and sugar, boiled and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and orange work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 537 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Marmalade Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the potato flour, orange marmalade, water, orange rind, orange juice, and sugar together in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture for one minute.

  3. Strain the sauce and serve it hot or cold.

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. Potato + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together537 recipes

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

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + orangetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,821 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Potato flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, glossy body.
Orange marmalade
Adds bitter-sweet orange flavour and some body to the sauce.
Orange rind and juice
Provides fresh citrus aroma and acidity that balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the citrus acidity.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for one minute. Potato flour thickens only when the starch is heated to boiling and the granules swell and gelatinise. Boiling long enough ensures the sauce thickens fully and the starch taste cooks out, so it does not stay thin or floury.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, orange, 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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