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Marmalade, Orange, Easy Way of Making
Select sound Seville oranges in the month of March or April, and look them well over to see that there are no bruises or blemishes. Put them whole into a large preserving-pan with plenty of water, and stew until soft, not for-getting to change the water two or three times. When tender, pour off the water, peel off the rind, take away the pips, and weigh one pound and a half of lump sugar to every pound of pulp, and add a small cupful of the water that the oranges were boiled in. Clear the syrup by boiling it for a few minutes before adding the pulp, cut the rind into thin strips, and when the pulp has simmered ten minutes, add the rind and give another boil for ten minutes. Time to boil the oranges, two hours, or until tender. Average cost, 7d. per pot.
A whole-fruit marmalade of the simplest kind: boil the oranges soft, then sweeten. A few of its assumptions need translating, and the boiling times will not give you a set on their own.
- Seville oranges and their seasonBitter Sevilles are a winter fruit in Britain, usually in the shops from late December through February; March and April as given here is the tail end of the crop. They freeze whole very well, so buy in season and boil them later.
- Changing the waterTwo or three changes of water during the two-hour boil leach out much of the bitterness, so no preliminary soaking is needed. It also washes away flavour, so expect a milder, sweeter marmalade than a traditional cut-peel one.
- Lump sugarLoaf or lump sugar was refined cane sugar sold in blocks and broken up for weighing. Ordinary granulated sugar is the same thing; preserving sugar, with its larger crystals, dissolves with less stirring.
- The proportionA pound and a half of sugar to a pound of pulp is a generous proportion, and it is calculated on pulp alone, before the rind goes back in. It will keep well but taste sweet; less sugar gives a sharper preserve, though it is the sugar concentration that keeps the jar.
- Don't discard the pipsThe pips and pith hold most of the pectin, and this recipe throws them out. Tie them in a square of muslin, boil them with the pulp and syrup, then lift them out and squeeze the jelly back in — otherwise the set will be poor after so much boiling in changed water.
- The times will not set itTen minutes plus ten minutes is a guide, not a test. Boil hard until the mixture reaches 104–105°C (220°F), or until a spoonful on a chilled saucer wrinkles when pushed. Let it stand ten minutes off the heat before potting so the shreds don't all float to the top.
- JarsFill clean jars heated in a 140°C (275°F) oven and seal while the marmalade is still hot. The Victorian alternative was a paper round dipped in brandy under a tied-down cover, which works but relies on the sugar doing all the preserving.
- Yield and costSix or seven medium Sevilles, about 1 kg, will give roughly 1.5 kg of marmalade — four to five standard jars. "7d. per pot" is seven old pence, a costing for a household keeping accounts rather than a price you can convert usefully.
Cassell's places this among the plainest of a whole family of marmalade recipes, and the "easy way" is exactly what it claims: the labour of a proper Seville marmalade lies in shredding cold peel by hand, and boiling the fruit whole first removes it. The word marmalade comes from the Portuguese marmelada, a stiff quince paste (marmelo is quince), and only settled onto citrus in Britain over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the runnier, shred-suspended orange preserve familiar today is largely a Scottish development, traditionally credited to the Keiller family of Dundee, though bitter-orange preserves were being made in domestic kitchens well before any commercial firm existed. The narrow season is the whole reason marmalade-making became a fixed point in the domestic year: Seville oranges are grown for bitterness rather than eating, arrive in one short winter glut, and the household that wanted marmalade had a few weeks to make a year's supply.