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Marmalade, Orange

A preserved citrus spread made from sliced Seville oranges and lemons cooked with sugar.

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 ↓

Marmalade, Orange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Slice the oranges and lemons thinly, removing the inner pith and seeds.

  2. Weigh the sliced fruit and add 3 pints of cold water for each pound of fruit.

  3. Cover and let it sit in an earthenware vessel for 3 days.

Cook and set

  1. Transfer the mixture to a preserving pan and boil gently until the fruit is tender.

  2. Let it cool, weigh again, and add 1 pound of sugar for each pound of fruit.

  3. Bring to a boil, skim off any foam, and cook gently until the syrup thickens when tested on a cold plate.

  4. Pour into jars, cover with paper brushed with egg white, and store in a cool, dry place.

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

Seville oranges
Provide the bitter peel and pectin that give marmalade its flavour and set.
Lemons
Add extra acidity and pectin to help the marmalade set.
Preserving sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, at high concentration, helps preserve it and form a gel.

The step that matters

Testing the set on a cold plate. Marmalade sets only when enough sugar, acid and pectin are concentrated by boiling. Undercooking leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff or dark, so a cold-plate test shows when the syrup has thickened enough.

“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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