Skip to main content
Dessert

Bitter Orange Marmalade

A marmalade made from Seville oranges, water, and sugar, simmered until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Bitter Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Slice the Seville oranges into a large bowl, removing the seeds.

  2. Add 3 pints of cold water for every pound of fruit.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 12 to 18 hours.

Cook and set

  1. Boil gently until the oranges are soft, about 30 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture stand until the next day.

  3. Weigh the mixture.

  4. Add 1 pound of granulated sugar for every pound of fruit and juice.

  5. Boil until the marmalade is clear and thick.

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 + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Orange and sugar 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

Seville oranges
Provide the bitter peel and pectin that give the marmalade its flavour and set.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it set as it thickens during boiling.

The step that matters

Boil until the marmalade is clear and thick. Sugar must be added in the right proportion and the mixture boiled long enough for pectin and sugar to reach a gel. Undercooked marmalade stays runny, while overcooking can make it dark and stiff.

“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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes