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Dessert

Orange Marmalade

A preserve made from oranges, lemons, water, and sugar, boiled and thickened.

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 into pieces.

  2. Add the fruit to 11 cups of cold water and let it stand overnight.

Cook

  1. Boil the mixture slowly for 50 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat, add 8 cups of sugar, and let it stand overnight again.

  3. Boil for about 15 minutes, or until it thickens.

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
Their peel and pith supply pectin and a bitter citrus aroma.
Lemons
Their acidity and natural pectin help the marmalade set and brighten the flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, helps the marmalade thicken and gel, and preserves it.

The step that matters

Boiling until it thickens. The pectin and sugar set into a gel only at a high enough concentration. Stopping too early leaves the marmalade runny, while boiling too long makes it stiff and dull.

“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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