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Orange Marmalade
Peel the oranges, taking all the seed and tough skin out of them. Cut the peel in small pieces, put in cold water and boil till tender. Make a syrup, one pound sugar to one pint water. Put a pound of the oranges (mixed with the peel) to a pint of the syrup, and boil all for two hours.--Mrs. C. C. McP. Orange Marmalade.
The day before making, peel one dozen oranges (no matter how sour and indifferent). Throw the peel in a bucket of water, take out the seed, cut up the pulp fine with a pair of old scissors. Then take the peel, cut it in thin strips and throw it into fresh water. Pare and slice pippins (or any other nice apple). Weigh six pounds of them, stew with a little water till perfectly done, and set away. Next day, run this pulp through a covander into a preserving kettle. Add six pounds sugar and boil slowly, constantly scraping from the bottom.
Take the orange peel (which should have been left in soak all night), boil till perfectly soft and free from bitterness, changing the water three times while boiling. In another preserving kettle, simmer this with the orange pulp and two pounds sugar. When both are nearly done, turn the oranges into the apples and cook them very thick. Cool in a bowl, and then put in a glass jar with a screw top.--Mrs. S. T.
Two separate methods sit under one heading here: a small, plain marmalade of peel and pulp in syrup, and a larger apple-extended version that stretches a dozen indifferent oranges into something like ten pounds of preserve. Both assume you know when a preserve is done by eye.
- Set point, not clock timeThe first recipe's two hours of boiling describes an open kettle over uneven heat, not a target. Work to temperature instead: 220-222F on a thermometer, or a spoonful that wrinkles on a chilled plate. In a modern pan two hours may well take the sugar past that point and leave the marmalade dark and bitter.
- CovanderA colander, here used as a coarse sieve. The stewed apples are pushed through it to leave skin and core behind, so a food mill or a wide-mesh strainer does the same job.
- PippinsA general term for firm, tart, high-pectin apples. Bramley, Granny Smith or any cooking apple that breaks down to a puree will work; the apples are in the recipe for pectin and bulk, not flavour.
- Preserving kettleA wide, heavy, unlined copper or enamelled pan. Any wide heavy-bottomed pot works, but avoid bare aluminium or cast iron with this much citrus acid. Width matters more than depth because evaporation is what thickens the preserve.
- Why the peel water is changed three timesThis is the hinge of the second recipe. Overnight soaking plus three changes of boiling water pulls the bitterness out of the pith; skip it and the whole batch turns acrid. Boil the peel until a strip crushes easily between finger and thumb before it ever meets sugar.
- Sugar proportionsThe second method uses six pounds of sugar to six pounds of apple, plus a further two pounds with the orange pulp and peel. That is roughly equal weights of sugar and fruit, which is standard for a long-keeping preserve. Reducing the sugar substantially will give a softer set and a much shorter shelf life.
- SealingA screw-top glass jar in 1879 was not a processed seal. For storage at room temperature, fill sterilised jars and process in a boiling water bath according to current guidance for high-sugar fruit preserves; otherwise refrigerate and use within a few weeks.
- YieldThe first recipe is a small batch: a pound of fruit to a pint of syrup, reduced by long boiling, so expect noticeably less than a pint of finished marmalade. The second, with six pounds of apple, a dozen oranges and eight pounds of sugar, makes a great deal of preserve -- several quarts, depending on how far it is cooked down.
Marmalade reached American household books by way of Britain, where the word had shifted from its original sense of quince paste (from the Portuguese marmelo, quince) to mean specifically a citrus preserve cut with peel. What is telling here is the second recipe's opening aside, "no matter how sour and indifferent": oranges were an imported, seasonal luxury for Virginia households, and a long-boiled preserve was one way to make poor fruit worth the sugar it took. The six pounds of apple pulp does similar work, extending costly citrus with cheaper local orchard fruit while supplying pectin. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, published in 1879 under Marion Cabell Tyree's editorship, is a compilation of contributions from named and initialled Virginia housekeepers, which may be why the same dish appears twice, side by side, in two quite different hands.