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ORANGE MARMALADE (another way)
Weigh the oranges before boiling them, and allow two pounds of loaf sugar to every pound of fruit. Boil in plenty of water until they are so soft that the skins can be easily pierced, then drain, and peel them. Carefully remove the pulp with the back of a tea-spoon, and throw the pips and skins into cold water. Cut the rinds into thin strips. Rub a preserving-pan quickly round with a cut lemon, and boil the sugar to a syrup with a quarter of a pint of the strained water in which the pips were soaked to each pound. Throw in the fruit, let it boil, then draw it to the side of the fire, and simmer gently until the marmalade jellies. Put it into jars, cover closely, and store for use. Time, half an hour to simmer the marmalade. Probable cost of Seville oranges, 5s. or 6s. per hundred.
A whole-fruit marmalade of the older English type: the oranges are boiled soft before being cut, which makes the peel tender and saves any long shredding of raw rind. A few points of translation are needed.
- The pip water is the pointThe pips and inner skins are thrown into cold water, and the strained soaking liquid, added to the syrup, carries much of the pectin that helps the preserve set. The recipe gives no soaking time; a few hours in just enough water to cover, then strained into the syrup rather than discarded, follows the sense of it.
- Which orangesSeville oranges are the fruit named in the cost note and the ones meant here. They are a bitter marmalade orange, in season roughly January to February, and sweet eating oranges will give a cloying result that sets less readily.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone. Ordinary granulated is the direct equivalent; preserving sugar dissolves more cleanly if you have it.
- ProportionsTwo pounds of sugar to one pound of raw fruit is high even by preserving standards and gives a sweet, firm marmalade. The weighing is done before boiling, so note the weight of the raw whole oranges.
- A quarter of a pintAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, about 140 ml, of the strained pip water for every pound of sugar.
- Boiling the fruit soft"Until the skins can be easily pierced" usually means 1.5 to 2 hours of gentle simmering for whole Sevilles, topping up the water as it falls. Undercooked peel will never soften again once sugar is in the pan.
- The lemon rubWiping the preserving pan with a cut lemon is an old habit the recipe does not explain. A heavy pan with a wide base matters more in practice; the wide surface is what lets the water evaporate fast.
- Half an hour, and how to knowThe stated half-hour of simmering is a guide only. Test for set at 220F (105C) on a sugar thermometer, or by the wrinkle test on a chilled saucer, and start testing early rather than late ull overcooked marmalade turns dark and chewy.
- Filling and storing"Cover closely" in this period meant waxed discs and a tied paper cover in a cool larder. Fill scrubbed, heated jars, seal while very hot, and store somewhere dark and cool.
- YieldReckon on roughly 1.5 lb of finished marmalade for every pound of sugar used.
Marmalade began as something quite different: the word comes from the Portuguese marmelada, a stiff quince paste sliced like cheese, and only in Britain did it migrate to a loose citrus preserve eaten at breakfast. The bitter Seville orange, imported in bulk each winter, became its standard fruit, and the Dundee trade ull traditionally traced to the Keiller family in the eighteenth century ull did much to make chunky orange marmalade a national fixture. Cassell's gives several methods, and quotes a price of five or six shillings per hundred oranges.