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Orange and Lemon Marmalade
Has no bitter flavor 4 Oranges and 2 Lemons 4 level cups Prepared Pulp and Rinds 7½ level cups (34 lbs.) Sugar 1/2 bottle (scant 1/2 cup) CERTO Peel off orange and lemon skins in quarters close to pulp and set aside. Break up pulps and remove seeds; add 1 cup water and simmer in covered saucepan 45 minutes. Meanwhile boil orange and lemon rinds with 8 cups water in covered saucepan 30 minutes. Drain off and discard water. With sharp-edged spoon scrape out and discard all white part of orange and lemon skins right down to yellow rind. Then with a very sharp knife shred rinds Just as thin as possible in shreds about 1 inch long. Mix shredded rinds with cooked pulp and proceed as below.
A liquid-pectin marmalade from a Certo booklet, where the recipe assumes you will finish with the standard cook-and-fill method printed elsewhere in the book. What is here is really the fruit preparation.
- The missing half of the method"Proceed as below" points to the general Certo procedure printed elsewhere in the booklet: the 4 cups of prepared pulp and rinds are combined with the sugar, boiled hard for a short measured time, the Certo stirred in, and the jars filled. The exact order and timing differ between Certo booklet editions -- whether the pectin goes in before or after the hard boil, and whether that boil is half a minute or a minute -- so follow the version the booklet itself prints. Either way the boiling is measured in minutes, not the long open-kettle simmer older marmalades use.
- "34 lbs." is a typo7½ level cups of granulated sugar weighs about 3¼ lb, which is what the original almost certainly read. Measure by the cup and ignore the weight.
- Certo quantityHalf a bottle, which the recipe itself puts at a scant ½ cup, so the bottle it assumes held roughly 8 fl oz; measure by the cup rather than counting modern pouches. Liquid pectin and powdered pectin are not interchangeable here — powdered pectin goes in with the fruit before the sugar, and substituting it in this order will give syrup.
- Why it has no bitter flavorThe 30-minute boil in 8 cups of water, the discarded cooking water, and the scraping away of every trace of white pith are the whole point. Leaving the pith on is a common reason a marmalade turns harsh.
- Measure the pulp and rindThe yield of pulp and shredded rind from 4 oranges and 2 lemons varies with fruit size. Measure out exactly 4 level cups of the combined mixture; if you are short, make up the difference with a little of the pulp cooking liquid rather than adding more sugar-to-fruit imbalance.
- ShreddingThin, roughly 1-inch shreds matter for texture and for even suspension in the set jelly. Chilling the drained rinds briefly firms them and makes fine shredding much easier.
- Filling and sealingBooklets of this vintage direct you to pour into glasses and seal with melted paraffin. Use modern two-piece lids on hot sterilised half-pint jars and process 10 minutes in a boiling-water bath instead; paraffin seals fail and are no longer considered sound practice.
- YieldAbout 10 to 11 half-pint jars, roughly 5 pints, from the quantities given.
Certo was one of the first commercial pectins sold to home cooks, and the little recipe booklets that came with the bottle did as much as anything to change how preserves were made in the 1920s and 1930s. Before added pectin, marmalade and jelly depended on long boiling to concentrate the fruit's own pectin and acid, which darkened the colour and dulled the flavour; a measured dose of extracted apple or citrus pectin let the boil be cut to a minute and made the set predictable enough to print exact cup measurements. That reliability is why these booklets are so rigid about "level cups" — the whole system fails if the sugar-to-fruit ratio drifts. The elaborate pith-scraping and pre-boiling of the rinds here belongs to an older tradition of Seville-style marmalade making, generally traced to Scottish practice, adapted to sweet oranges by removing rather than embracing the bitterness.