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Orange Marmalade

A preserve made by boiling sliced oranges and lemons with water and sugar.

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. Slice the oranges and lemons very thin, including the skins.

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

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Boil the mixture until the fruit is tender.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Add 1¾ pounds of sugar for every pint of liquid.

  4. Boil the mixture for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

  5. Add sliced lemons halfway through the boiling.

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 pith supply pectin, which helps the marmalade set, plus bitter aroma.
Lemons
Add acidity and extra pectin, which brighten flavour and help the marmalade set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, preserves the fruit, and helps the mixture reach a firm set.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar before the long boil. Sugar must dissolve fully before the mixture boils hard. Undissolved sugar can crystallise and make the marmalade grainy, and the sugar and acid together help pectin form a firm gel.

“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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