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Grapefruit Marmalade (Use one lemon for each two)
Use one lemon for each two grapefruit; shred the fruit very fine. Weigh the fruit and pour over it three pints of cold water for each pint (or pound) of fruit. In the morning let cook until very tender, then set aside until the next day. Weigh the material and set as many pounds of sugar as of fruit into the oven to heat.
Heat the fruit to the boiling point, add the hot sugar and let boil until the syrup thickens on cooling.
Pineapple, Rhubarb, and Orange Conserve (J. D. Chandler) 3 pints rhubarb, cut fine 3 pints pineapple, cut fine 2 oranges 2½ quarts sugar Sprinkle the sugar in layers over the rhubarb, pineapple, and the pulp of the oranges cut fine, and let stand over night. Chop the rind of the oranges very fine, cover with cold water and let stand over night; then cook in the water until very tender and the water has evaporated considerably. Add the rind to the fruit and sugar and let cook until thick. It will take forty minutes or longer. The recipe makes about ten glasses.
Two preserves printed as one entry: a three-day grapefruit marmalade and a rhubarb-pineapple conserve. Both rely on judging the set by eye, which is the part worth replacing with a thermometer.
- The missing first nightThe marmalade instructions jump to "in the morning," because the shredded fruit and water are meant to stand overnight before the first cooking. Shred, weigh, add water, leave covered at room temperature, then cook the next day.
- "Each pint (or pound)"The book treats a pint of shredded citrus as roughly a pound, which is close enough for cut fruit. Three pints of water per pound sounds excessive but is standard for peel marmalade: the long soak and slow cook soften the rind and draw out pectin, and much of the water boils off.
- Heating the sugarSugar was warmed in the oven so it would dissolve without dropping the boil. A shallow pan at 200-250F for 10-15 minutes does it; stir once so the edges do not colour.
- Judging the set"Boil until the syrup thickens on cooling" means 220F at sea level, or a spoonful that wrinkles on a chilled plate. Marmalade thickens considerably as it cools, so pulling it at a jam-like consistency in the pan gives a solid brick.
- Grapefruit todayModern varieties are generally sweeter and less bitter than the grapefruit of a century ago. Include a good proportion of the white pith and membrane with the peel for pectin and for the edge the recipe expects.
- SealingNeither recipe says how to close the jars, because "glasses" were sealed with melted paraffin. Use two-piece canning lids and a boiling-water bath of about 10 minutes for half-pints; paraffin seals are no longer considered reliable.
- The conserve's sugarTwo and a half quarts of sugar is 10 cups, roughly 4½ lb, against 6 pints of cut fruit plus the oranges. Rhubarb and pineapple are both low in pectin, so the set depends on the sugar and the long boil.
- PineappleThe recipe does not say whether fresh or canned. Canned pineapple in juice works; drain it well.
- YieldThe conserve is given as about ten glasses, roughly ten half-pints. The marmalade yield depends entirely on how much fruit you start with.
Marmalade in the English-speaking world means citrus preserve set with the peel, a form generally traced to Scottish and English kitchens working with imported bitter Seville oranges, and grapefruit marmalade is a distinctly American extension of it. Grapefruit was still a novelty crop when this book was written: commercial groves in Florida and the Texas Rio Grande Valley expanded rapidly in the first decades of the twentieth century, and household manuals responded by finding uses for a fruit many cooks had only recently met. The lemon here is doing structural work rather than flavouring — added acid and pectin to help a set that grapefruit alone struggles to reach. The second recipe, credited to J. D. Chandler, is a conserve rather than a marmalade, the term used for a thick mixed-fruit preserve.