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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from equal parts sweet and bitter oranges, sugar, and water, cooked until jellied.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Bitter orange and orange work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 23 recipes. Both carry acetal, which smells cream, earthy. The science ↓

Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Weigh the oranges and note the total weight.

  2. In a preserving kettle, cover the fruit with cold water and bring to a boil.

  3. Drain the water and add fresh water (1 pint for every pound of oranges).

  4. Boil until the skin is tender, then let it cool.

  5. Slice the fruit thinly and remove the seeds.

Cook and jar

  1. In a preserving pan, combine the fruit, sugar, and water.

  2. Cook for about 1 hour, or until the marmalade jellies.

  3. Pour into jars and cover when 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. Bitter orange + orangetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetal (cream, earthy).

  2. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  3. Bitter orange + sugartop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14 recipes

Sugar and orange 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

Sweet and bitter oranges
Provide the fruit, peel, and pectin that give marmalade its body and bitter-sweet flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps it set into a jelly.
Water
Softens the peel during boiling and sets the fruit's liquid level for even cooking.

The step that matters

Cook until the marmalade jellies. Sugar and pectin set only at the right concentration. Undercooking leaves a runny marmalade, while overcooking can make it stiff and dark.

Swap the bitter orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Bitter orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange. 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.

More orange marmalade recipes

Seville 44Pudding 17Clear 10Scotch 6Bitter 4 See all 487 →

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