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Marmalade
Take the very thin peeling from oranges (lemon peel is also frequently added); cut into shreds. Place in saucepan, cover with boiling water, changing the water several times. Next remove the pulp. The best way is to cut the orange in half, take orange-spoon to scoop out the pulp. Use one-fourth the amount of lemons to the amount of oranges. To every pint of pulp and juice allow 1 pound of sugar. Boil sugar with water to a syrup; put in the peel and pulp, draw to one side, and keep below the boiling-point until all is a clear mass. Remove from the fire, cool, and seal up in jars or glasses. Pineapple, shredded, makes a good addition to the orange and lemon; or orange may be made up separately.
A loose working method rather than a fixed formula, typical of turn-of-the-century preserving instructions. The proportions given (one pound of sugar to a pint of pulp and juice) are sound; the cooking and sealing directions need updating.
- The instruction that matters mostMarmalade will not set unless the boiling mixture reaches 220-222F (about 8F above the boiling point of water at your altitude). Held "below the boiling-point" as written, it stays syrup. Cook it at a full rolling boil once the peel is tender and test with a thermometer or the cold-plate wrinkle test.
- "Draw to one side"On a coal range this meant sliding the pan off the hottest part of the plate to hold a bare simmer. On a modern hob it is medium-low. Use the gentle stage only for softening the peel, not for the setting boil.
- The syrup water is unspecifiedNo quantity is given for the water in the sugar syrup. About a cup of water per pound of sugar is enough to dissolve it; any excess simply has to be boiled off again, which lengthens the cook and dulls the colour.
- Changing the water on the peelTwo or three changes of boiling water strip most of the bitterness from thin-cut peel. Modern taste generally wants some bitterness retained, so one change is usually enough with sweet oranges, two or three with Seville.
- Orange-spoonA pointed, slightly serrated teaspoon sold in Victorian and Edwardian flatware sets. A grapefruit spoon or a small serrated knife does the same work; discard the pith and membrane, and keep the seeds, which are rich in pectin.
- Pectin and setPineapple is low in pectin and sweet oranges have less of it, and less acid, than bitter Sevilles, so this mixture can be slow to gel. Tying the reserved seeds and membranes in muslin and simmering them with the fruit supplies more pectin; the one-quarter proportion of lemons helps by adding both acid and pectin.
- SealingDo not cool before filling. Ladle the marmalade boiling hot into hot sterilised jars, leaving a quarter-inch of headspace, seal, and process in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes. "Glasses" here means the old paraffin-sealed tumbler, a method no longer considered reliable.
- YieldThe recipe names no quantity of fruit, so yield depends entirely on how much you start with and how far the mixture is reduced. Measure the pulp and juice by the pint as directed and allow 1 pound of sugar to each pint.