Home › The Orange › Sweet Orange Preserves
Sweet Orange Preserves
Preserves are sometimes made of the halved fruit, with the rind. In this case the oranges should be halved and cored sufficiently to remove seeds and the heaviest rag. It is sometimes considered necessary to let the fruit remain in weak brine over night, in the morning draining, placing in fresh water, bringing to a boil and repeating the process. At other times the prepared fruit is at once put on in fresh water and boiled till tender, replacing the water once. When translucent add equal quantity of hot sugar and cook till sufficiently thick. Still another form is to remove entirely the yellow rind, cooking the halved or quartered fruit till tender, then adding sugar; or to prepare as a compote, placing the prepared fruit in hot syrup and cooking down till ready to seal.
Orange Preserves may be varied as is the marmalade or by the addition of other citrus fruits, or barberry or cranberry syrup.
This is a method rather than a fixed formula — the writer sets out four ways to preserve whole or halved oranges and leaves the proportions to the cook. A few decisions have to be made before you start.
- The hinge: cook the peel tender before the sugar goes inSugar firms peel, and rind that is still tough when the sugar arrives tends to stay tough however long it boils. Simmer the halves in plain water until a straw or skewer passes through the peel easily, then add sugar.
- "Rag" and coringThe rag is the white membrane and pith between and around the segments. Remove the seeds and the coarse central column; leaving a little of the soft inner pith is fine and adds pectin.
- The brine soak and the changes of waterBoth steps are generally understood to draw bitterness out of the peel. The recipe offers the overnight brine as one option and the straight boiling with a change of water as another; the changes of boiling water do much of the work. Rinse well after brining or the finished preserve may taste faintly salty.
- "Equal quantity of sugar"Most likely equal weight to the drained, cooked fruit rather than equal volume, though the text does not say which; weigh the fruit after boiling. Heating the sugar first, as directed, keeps the syrup from stalling when it hits the pan.
- Judging "sufficiently thick"The peel should be translucent and the syrup should sheet from a spoon; on a thermometer that is about 220°F at sea level. Oranges carry enough pectin in the pith to set softly without added pectin, but this is a preserve in syrup, not a firm jelly.
- "Ready to seal"Sealing at the time often meant nothing more than hot jars and paraffin. Use current practice: hot preserve into hot half-pint jars, quarter-inch headspace, two-piece lids, and a boiling-water bath of about 10 minutes. Citrus preserves are high-acid and take a water bath safely.
- Compote versionDropping the prepared fruit straight into hot syrup and cooking it down helps keep the halves intact and glossy, at the cost of a longer boil. Choose it if you want whole halves to serve with cream or on cake.
- Barberry and cranberry syrupBoth are tart additions that cut the sweetness; cranberry in particular is associated with good pectin content, though a strained syrup carries less than whole fruit. Add sparingly or the orange is lost.
Whole-fruit orange preserves sit halfway between the Portuguese and Scottish marmalade tradition and the American practice of putting up fruit in heavy syrup, and this entry — vague on quantities, precise on the succession of waters — reads like kitchen knowledge passed on by demonstration rather than by measure. The repeated boilings and the brine soak address the problem of a thick, bitter peel. Sugar had also grown cheaper across the later nineteenth century, which is why a recipe like this can call casually for pound-for-pound sugar and expect no argument. The suggestion of barberry syrup is a period marker of its own; barberries were a common New England dooryard shrub and preserving ingredient before widespread eradication campaigns against them as a host for wheat stem rust in the early twentieth century pushed them out of American kitchens.