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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from oranges, lemons, and sugar, cooked until thick and solid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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. Remove the rind from the oranges and grate the pulp, preserving the juice and removing the seeds.

  2. Add the juice and grated rind of the lemons to the orange mixture.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Weigh the mixture and add ¾ pound of sugar for every pound of fruit.

  2. Cook the mixture, adding the grated rind of the oranges, until it becomes thick and solid.

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 bitter peel and pectin-rich pulp that give marmalade its flavour and body.
Lemons
Add acidity and natural pectin that help the marmalade set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken as it cooks and sets.

The step that matters

Cooking until thick and solid. Marmalade sets when sugar, acid and pectin reach the right concentration. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while overcooking 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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