Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserved citrus spread made from bitter, sweet, and lemon oranges simmered with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange 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. Slice the fruit as thin as possible, removing seeds.

  2. Put the sliced fruit in an earthen jar and pour the hot water over it.

  3. Let it stand for 24 hours.

Cook and set

  1. Put the mixture on to boil.

  2. Let it simmer for 4 hours or until tender.

  3. Add the sugar.

  4. Cook until it jells.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Bitter orange + orangetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetal (cream, earthy).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bitter orange + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. 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

Bitter oranges
Provide the primary peel and pectin that give marmalade its bitter flavour and set.
Sweet oranges
Add sweetness and body to the citrus flavour, balancing the bitter fruit.
Lemons
Add acidity that helps the marmalade gel and brightens the flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, allows it to set.

The step that matters

Cook until it jells. Marmalade sets when enough sugar, pectin and acid are concentrated by boiling. Undercooking leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dark.

Swap the bitter orange

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Bitter orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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.

More orange marmalade recipes

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

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes