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Grapefruit Marmalade
Has the full flavor and bitter tang of Grapefruit 2 Grapefruit (medium size) 4 level cups (2 lbs.) lbs.) Prepared Pulp and Rinds 74 level cups (314 lbs.) Sugar bottle (scant 1/2 cup) CERTO Peel fruit moderately thin, like an apple, and set peel aside.
Remove white rind in quarters, right down to the meats and put through food chopper or chop fine by hand. Boil with 3 cups water in covered saucepan 10 minutes to get the bitter extract. Remove seeds and core from grapefruit pulp and cut or crush fine. Press all liquor possible from cooked whites through a sieve into the crushed pulp, and discard cooked whites. Simmer the mixture of liquor and crushed pulp in covered saucepan 45 minutes. Meanwhile boil yellow rind with 7 cups water in covered pan 30 minutes; drain off and discard water. With a very sharp knife shred rind as thin as possible in shreds about 1 inch long. Mix shredded rinds with cooked pulp and proceed as on page 10.
Important!
Be sure to read CAREFULLY instructions for paraffining on page 3. Wax open glasses at once after filling.
A three-part marmalade: the white pith is boiled for its bitter extract, the pulp is simmered, and the coloured peel is blanched and shredded. The measurements are the whole point of a Certo recipe, so measure the prepared fruit before you add sugar.
- Certo is liquid pectinCerto was and is a liquid pectin extract, and the recipe calls for a scant 1/2 cup of it (the bottle size the booklet assumed is not recoverable from this text). Modern liquid pectin is sold in 3 fl oz pouches, so measure rather than count pouches. Powdered pectin is not interchangeable with it, since it is added at a different stage.
- Measure, do not guessThe sugar is calibrated to exactly 4 level cups of prepared pulp and rind. Grapefruit vary enough that two medium fruit may give more or less; measure the cooked pulp and shreds together in a graduated cup and scale the sugar proportionally if you are off.
- The finishing method the recipe points toThe step referred to as "page 10" is not reproduced here; it will be the booklet's standard liquid-pectin routine, which typically means combining fruit and sugar in a large deep pan, bringing to a full rolling boil, boiling hard about a minute while stirring, taking it off the heat, stirring in the pectin, then skimming and stirring gently for several minutes to keep the shreds suspended. Neither a thermometer nor a plate test is part of this method; prolonged boiling after the pectin goes in is a common cause of a runny batch.
- Pan sizeRoughly eleven cups of fruit and sugar will foam to several times its volume at a rolling boil. Use a pan of at least 6 to 8 quarts.
- The bitter extractBoiling the white pith and pressing its liquor into the pulp is what gives this marmalade its "tang." Skipping it produces a bland, sweet grapefruit jam. Conversely, if you dislike bitterness, blanch the yellow peel twice rather than shortening the pith boil, which also carries pectin.
- Shredding the peelBlanched peel is slippery. Chill it, drain it well, and lay it flat, pith side down, before cutting; a thin, very sharp blade gives the fine 1-inch shreds the recipe asks for.
- SealingThe paraffin wax cap the book insists on is no longer considered a safe seal, as it cracks and admits mould. Fill sterilised half-pint jars, leave 1/4 inch headspace, apply two-piece lids and process 10 minutes in a boiling water bath, or refrigerate and use within about three weeks.
- YieldThe recipe as transcribed gives none. On the stated quantities expect somewhere in the region of 4 pints, but treat that as an estimate.
Certo was among the earliest commercial fruit pectins sold to home cooks -- the exact date of its introduction is not settled -- and the small booklets that came with the bottle were written to prove a point: with added pectin you no longer needed to boil fruit down for an hour and hope. Marmalade was the hardest case to argue, since long, slow cooking is traditionally where the bitterness, the set and the suspended peel all come from at once. The company's answer, visible here, was to break the fruit into its parts and treat each for what it contributes -- pith for bitter extract, pulp for body, blanched rind for texture -- then bring them together for a single one-minute boil. The instruction to seal with paraffin dates the page as clearly as the wording does; wax-topped tumblers were standard household practice for jams through the first half of the twentieth century and were only later withdrawn from official recommendations.