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Orange Marmalade
Twelve pounds sour oranges, twelve pounds crushed sugar; wash the oranges and pare them as you would apples; put the peel in a porcelain-lined kettle with twice its bulk or more of cold water; keep it covered, and boil until perfectly tender; if the water boils away, add more; the peel is generally very hard, and requires several hours boiling; cut the oranges in two crosswise, and squeeze out the juice and the soft pulp, have a pitcher with a strainer in the top, place in a two-quart bowl, squeeze the thin juice and seeds in the strainer and the rest with the pulp in the bowl, drawing the skin as you squeeze it over the edge of the tin strainer, to scrape off the pulp, then pour all the juice and pulp on the sugar; the white skins must be covered with three quarts of cold water, and boiled half an hour, drain the water on the sugar, put the white skins in the colander, four or five together, and pound off the soft part, of which there must be in all two pounds and four ounces, put this with the sugar and juice; when the peel is tender drain it from the water, and choose either of these three modes: Pound it in a mortar, chop it in a bowl, or cut it in delicate shreds with a pair of scissors. There is still another way, which saves the necessity of handling the peel after it is boiled; it is to grate the yellow rind from the orange, then tie it in a muslin bag, and boil until soft, which you can tell by rubbing a little of it between the thumb and finger; it is then ready for the other ingredients; put the whole in a porcelain kettle, or in a bright tin preserving-pan, and boil about an hour; when it begins to thicken it must be tried occasionally, by letting a little cool in a spoon laid on ice. To prevent its burning, pass the spoon often over the bottom of the kettle; when it is thick as desired put it in tumblers and cover with paper. - Mrs. Elizabeth S. Miller in "In the Kitchen."
A full bitter-orange marmalade worked from whole fruit, with the peel, pith and pulp all handled separately. The method is sound; the scale and the sealing are what need attention.
- Sour oranges means SevilleThese are bitter Seville-type oranges, in season roughly January to February, thick-skinned and full of pectin. Sweet navels or Valencias will give a sugary syrup that never sets properly; if you cannot get Sevilles, use a recipe written for sweet oranges with added lemon.
- Crushed sugarLoaf or lump sugar broken down with a mallet. Plain granulated white sugar is the direct equivalent, pound for pound.
- Scale it downTwelve pounds of fruit and twelve pounds of sugar yields upwards of twenty half-pint jars, and a pan deep enough for it is a canning kettle, not a saucepan. A quarter batch (3 lb fruit, 3 lb sugar) behaves the same and fits an ordinary wide pot.
- White skinsThe pith, or albedo, left after the yellow zest is pared off and the juice squeezed out. Boiling it half an hour and pounding the softened part off in a colander is a pectin extraction; the two pounds four ounces called for is proportional to the twelve-pound batch, so reduce it with everything else.
- VesselsPorcelain-lined meant enamelled ironware; use enamelled cast iron or stainless steel. Unlined copper reacts with the acid in bitter oranges; a tin lining is far less reactive but wears through with scraping, which is why the "bright tin preserving-pan" is not the modern choice.
- The set test, in numbersCooling a little on a spoon laid on ice is the wrinkle test, and it is still the most reliable check. On a thermometer the setting point is 220F (105C) at sea level; the hour of boiling given here is a guide, not a rule, and a smaller batch will get there faster.
- Watch the bottomMarmalade this thick scorches from below with no warning smell until it is too late. Passing the spoon across the base of the pan often, as directed, is the single instruction to follow literally.
- SealingTumblers covered with paper was the period method, sometimes with melted paraffin beneath. For anything you intend to keep at room temperature, use canning jars with new lids and process in a boiling-water bath; otherwise refrigerate and eat within a month or two.
The attribution is worth reading: Elizabeth Smith Miller's In the Kitchen (1875) was one of the more carefully written American cookbooks of the decade, and its author was a well-known figure in the woman suffrage movement — daughter of the abolitionist Gerrit Smith, and generally credited with the short-skirt-and-trousers costume that the press named after Amelia Bloomer. The marmalade itself depends on the bitter Seville orange, long grown around Seville and shipped north in midwinter; the word "marmalade" came into English from the Portuguese marmelada, a quince paste. That this recipe insists on sour oranges, and puts so much labor into the pith, shows a cook who understood — without the vocabulary of pectin — exactly where the set comes from.