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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserved fruit spread made from oranges, lemons, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

  1. Pare the fruit very thin.

  2. Cut the parings as fine as possible.

  3. Cut the remainder of the fruit.

Cook

  1. Place it in a large pot with 9 pints of water.

  2. Tie the parings in a muslin bag and add it to the pot.

  3. Boil everything together for 2 hours.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag.

  2. Add the sugar and parings back into the liquid.

  3. Boil quickly for 20 minutes.

  4. Cut the oranges crosswise.

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
Peel and pulp supply bitterness, aroma, and natural pectin for setting.
Lemons
Add acidity and extra pectin, helping the marmalade set firmly.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken into a spreadable gel.

The step that matters

Boil quickly for 20 minutes after adding the sugar. The sugar must dissolve fully and the mixture must reach the setting point. Boiling too briefly leaves the marmalade runny, while overcooking darkens its color and flavor.

“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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