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Dessert

Scotch Marmalade

A marmalade made from Seville oranges, lemons, water, 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: 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 ↓

Scotch Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

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

  2. Place the fruit in an earthenware pan, cover with cold water, and let it stand for 24 hours.

  3. Soak the seeds in 1 pint of cold water for 24 hours.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Boil the mixture quickly for 2 hours.

  2. Strain the liquid and add it to the oranges before adding the sugar.

  3. Add the sugar and boil again for 1.5 hours.

  4. If a thinner consistency is desired, reduce the boiling time after adding the sugar.

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 the marmalade its characteristic flavour and set.
Lemons
Add extra acidity and pectin to support setting and brighten the flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it concentrates, helps it gel and preserve.

The step that matters

Boiling after adding the sugar. Sugar must dissolve fully before the long boil, and the boil must be long enough to concentrate the syrup. Too little boiling leaves the marmalade runny, while overboiling can darken and bitter it.

“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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