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Amber Marmalade
I grapefruit 7 pints cold water I orange I lemon 5 pounds (ten cups) sugar Prepare the fruit and proceed in every particular as given above for orange marmalade. The ingredients yield about ten tumblers of marmalade.
A three-fruit marmalade that borrows its method from the orange marmalade printed just before it: fruit sliced thin, soaked overnight in the water, boiled once, left to stand, then boiled again with sugar. The proportions here are sound, but the recipe assumes you know the parent method and the era's sealing habits.
- The missing method"Proceed in every particular as given above" points back to the orange marmalade printed before it, which is not reproduced here. Period marmalade methods of this type generally ran over two days: slice the fruit thin (peel, pulp and juice), cover with the 7 pints of cold water, let it stand, boil until the peel is tender, let it stand again, then add the sugar and boil to setting point. Follow whatever intervals the parent recipe actually gives; the standing period is what softens the peel.
- Save the seedsCitrus seeds and membranes are rich in pectin. Tie them in cheesecloth, boil them with the fruit, and squeeze the bag out before adding sugar. Without them an all-citrus marmalade of this size may set poorly.
- Setting pointCook the sugared fruit to 220F/104C at sea level, or until a spoonful wrinkles on a chilled saucer. This is the hinge of the recipe. Grapefruit marmalade is easy to overcook into caramel-dark toffee, so start testing early.
- UnitsSeven pints is 14 cups, US measure. The book equates 5 pounds of sugar with ten cups; by modern measure 5 pounds of granulated sugar is nearer eleven cups, so weigh it if you can. A "tumbler" was a straight-sided drinking glass of roughly 8 fluid ounces, making the yield about ten half-pint jars.
- Sugar is structuralThe sugar is not only sweetening; at this ratio it sets the gel and preserves the jar. Cutting it substantially gives a loose, quick-spoiling product unless you switch to a modern low-sugar pectin recipe written for the purpose.
- SealingPeriod practice was to pour into hot tumblers and cover with melted paraffin. Current guidance is to fill sterilised half-pint jars to 1/4 inch headspace, apply two-piece lids, and process 10 minutes in a boiling-water bath. Paraffin seals fail unevenly and let mould in.
- Grapefruit bitternessGrapefruit pith is more bitter than orange pith and the bitterness intensifies as the marmalade concentrates. Pare away the white layer more aggressively than you would for a Seville orange, or discard the first soaking water if you want a milder jar.
Amber marmalade is one of the three-fruit marmalades that appear in American cookbooks of this period, at a time when Seville oranges were far less available in the United States than domestic Florida and Texas citrus. Grapefruit was still a comparative novelty on American tables at the turn of the twentieth century, becoming more familiar as Florida groves expanded, and cookbooks of the period gave it uses beyond a halved fruit with sugar. The name is usually taken to refer to the colour: grapefruit, orange and lemon boiled down together give a paler, clearer set than a long-cooked Seville marmalade. Cross-referencing one master method for a class of preserve, then varying the fruit, was a common habit in preserving manuals.