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Orange Marmalade
Boil small oranges in water until they can be easily pierced with a straw, and then cut in quarters. Allow half a pound of sugar to a pound of fruit, and make a clear syrup; put in the fruit and cook over a slow fire until the fruit is clear; then stir in an ounce of isinglass and let it boil again; first take out the oranges and strain the jelly over them. IX. Jam of Apples and Other Fruits.
THE apples should be ripe and of the best eating sort. Pare and quarter, put into a pan with just water enough to cover them, and boil until they can be reduced to a mash. Then for each pound of the pared apples, a pound of sifted sugar is added, sprinkled over the boiling mixture. Boil and stir it well until reduced to a jam. Then put it into pots. The above is the simple way of making. To have it of the best possible clearness, make a thick syrup with three pounds of sugar to each pint of water and clarify it with an egg. Then add one pint of this syrup for every three pounds of apples, and boil the jam to a proper thickness. This recipe will answer for all the pip fruits. Sour stone fruits require up to half a pound of sugar to a pound of fruit, according to taste.
Two recipes have run together here: a whole-fruit orange marmalade set with isinglass, and a general jam formula for apples and other fruits. Read them as separate procedures.
- The straw testBoiling the whole oranges until a straw pierces them takes an hour or more depending on size and thickness of peel. A wooden skewer should meet no resistance in the pith. Peel still firm at this stage will not soften much in the syrup afterwards.
- IsinglassA gelatin made from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish, sold in sheets or shreds and once standard for clearing and setting jellies. It is now a specialty item mostly used in brewing. An ounce is a large dose; plain gelatin sets similarly, though citrus peel and pith carry enough natural pectin that most modern marmalades need no added setting agent at all.
- What sort of orangeNineteenth-century marmalade oranges were bitter Sevilles, small, thick-skinned and sour. Sweet eating oranges give a flabby, over-sweet result at these proportions. If Sevilles are out of season, sharpen sweet oranges with lemon.
- Sugar ratiosHalf a pound of sugar per pound of fruit is a low-sugar preserve by preserving standards, where equal weights is the traditional keeping ratio. The apple jam that follows uses the full pound to a pound. Expect the marmalade to be looser and less stable than the jam.
- Clarifying with eggBeaten egg white stirred into the syrup as it heats coagulates and traps scum, which is skimmed off. It is a sugar-refining step from an era of less pure sugar; modern granulated sugar dissolves clear and the step can be dropped.
- Slow fire, and knowing when it is doneA slow fire means a bare simmer, low enough that the syrup does not colour. For the jam, "proper thickness" is the wrinkle test: a spoonful on a chilled plate that skins over and wrinkles when pushed, roughly 220F on a thermometer.
- Pip fruits and stone fruitsPip fruits are the pomes: apples, pears, quinces, medlars. The instruction holds for them because they are high in pectin. Sour stone fruits, apricots and plums, are given up to half a pound of sugar per pound, 'according to taste.'
- Potting"Put it into pots" meant earthenware sealed with a paper or wax cover, kept in a cold larder. For shelf storage today, fill sterilised jars and process in a boiling water bath according to current guidance for your jar size; otherwise refrigerate and use within a few weeks.
Marmalade began as something firmer than the spread we know: the word comes through French from the Portuguese marmelada, a stiff paste of quinces (marmelo), imported into Britain in boxes from the sixteenth century and eaten in slices as a sweetmeat. Oranges displaced quinces gradually, and the shift from a sliceable paste to a jelly with peel suspended in it is often attributed to Scottish practice in the eighteenth century, though the story is traditional rather than settled and English recipes for orange marmalade with peel are earlier. The whole-fruit method given here, boiling the oranges soft before they ever meet sugar, produces notably tender peel. The isinglass belongs to the same period taste for brilliantly clear jellies on the table, a form of display that required a fish-derived gelatin and a good deal of straining, and which fell away as cheaper setting agents became available to any household.