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Seville Orange Jelly
The ingredients required for this are: the strained juice of eight Seville oranges, and the thin rinds of two, sixteen sweet oranges, a quart of water, and sugar as below. Peel and pip the sweet oranges, slice them, and put them with the pips into a preserving-pan, with the water and the rinds and juice of the Seville oranges. Simmer for half an hour, and strain till clear. Then weigh the whole, and boil it alone for five minutes; add its weight in crushed and heated loaf sugar, and boil until it jellies readily, pour into small pots, and cover. Probable cost, about 1s. per pound.
A straightforward equal-weight jelly whose success depends almost entirely on pectin from the Seville fruit and on hitting the setting point. The vague instructions hide a fairly exacting piece of sugar work.
- The hinge: setting point"Boil until it jellies readily" means 220F/105C on a sugar thermometer, or a spoonful wrinkling when pushed on a chilled saucer. Judge by the test, not the clock; overboiling gives a dark, tough jelly, underboiling a syrup that never sets.
- Seville orangesBitter marmalade oranges, in UK shops for a few weeks in January and February, sometimes sold frozen. They carry more pectin and acid than sweet oranges, which is likely why eight of them are set against sixteen sweet ones. Without them the jelly is much less likely to set.
- Loaf sugar, heatedLoaf sugar was a hard refined cone broken and crushed at home; ordinary granulated or preserving sugar is the modern equivalent. Warming it before it goes in helps keep the boil from stalling, which may be why the original specifies heated sugar.
- "Weigh the whole"Weigh the strained liquid, as the recipe directs, before the five-minute boil, then add an equal weight of sugar.
- Keep the pipsThe pips are a pectin source and the recipe has them simmer with the fruit; they are removed at the straining stage.
- Preserving-panA wide, heavy, unlined copper or a stainless maslin pan. Width matters more than depth: evaporation is what concentrates the jelly, and a tall narrow pot will scorch before it sets.
- Straining"Strain till clear" means through a scalded jelly bag or a double thickness of muslin, left to drip undisturbed. Squeezing the bag forces pulp through and clouds the finished jelly.
- Potting and coveringSmall hot sterilised jars, filled to the brim and sealed at once. Victorian covers were waxed discs and tied paper; modern screw lids or a brief water bath give a more reliable seal for long keeping.
- YieldThe "1s. per pound" costing is a period price and tells you only that this counted as a modest luxury.
Seville oranges reached British kitchens as a seasonal import from Spain and were valued precisely for what makes them inedible raw: sharp acid and abundant pectin, the two things a set preserve needs. The recipe demonstrates the underlying rule of jelly-making, equal weights of strained juice and sugar boiled to the setting point, using bitter fruit to supply the pectin that sweet oranges lack. The window for the fruit was, and still is, short, and marmalade and orange jelly were made while the Sevilles lasted. Loaf sugar, listed here without comment, was the expensive refined grade.