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Seville Orange Jelly
Make as for Scotch Orange Marmalade No. 1, omitting the chipped rind. Boil the juice with the rind of two sweet oranges and two lemons, removing them when the juice has cooked down rather thick, then strain and add sugar as directed.
This is a variation entry rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you have the marmalade recipe it points back to, and it gives no quantities of its own. A few things need filling in before it will work at the stove.
- What the parent recipe suppliesThe instruction to "add sugar as directed" refers back to the marmalade formula, which is not reproduced here; a common jelly ratio is about a pound of sugar to a pint of strained juice, but check the parent recipe rather than assuming. Measure the strained liquid rather than guessing; jelly set depends on that ratio.
- Seville orangesThese are the bitter or sour oranges used for marmalade, in season only in late winter. They are high in both acid and pectin, which is exactly why they jelly well.
- The rind is a flavouring, not an ingredientThe two sweet oranges and two lemons go in whole-rinded and are lifted out before straining. They are there for oil and aroma; leaving them in past the point given makes the jelly harshly bitter.
- Pips and pithWhatever the parent recipe says, keep the seeds and white pith of the Sevilles in the first boiling, tied in muslin if you prefer. They carry most of the pectin. Discard them before the sugar goes in.
- "Cooked down rather thick"The recipe does not define this; it signals that the juice has reduced and thickened before any sugar is added. It is a reduction stage, not a setting stage.
- Setting pointAfter the sugar dissolves, boil hard and test at 220F (105C) on a sugar thermometer, or use the cold-saucer wrinkle test. Period cookery books describe judging by the flake off a spoon; the thermometer is faster and more reliable.
- Straining for clarityFor a clear jelly, let the fruit pulp drip through a scalded jelly bag without pressing it. Squeezing forces through fine solids and gives a cloudy set.
- Yield and keepingYield depends on how far the juice is reduced; a pint of strained juice with its sugar will fill on the order of two to three half-pint jars. Pour into hot sterilised jars and seal; the sugar and acid levels make it a reliably keeping preserve, but process in a boiling water bath if you want a shelf life beyond a few months.
The Seville orange reached Europe long before the sweet orange and was for centuries the orange people meant, prized for acidity rather than eating. Its association with marmalade is Scottish by tradition, and the Dundee trade of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries fixed the bitter orange preserve as a British breakfast institution; the jelly here is simply the same preserve strained clear, without the chipped peel that gives marmalade its texture.