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Peach Marmalade
4 pounds sugar juice 2 lemons Wipe and cut peaches in halves, remove stones, cut peaches in pieces; add sugar and cook slowly two hours; add lemon juice. Pour into glasses and cover.
Quince, apricot, plum, and prune marmalade may be made like Peach Marmalade. 4 pounds blackberries
A plain long-cook fruit preserve from the era before pectin came in a box: the fruit and sugar simply cook down until the mixture sets on its own. A few of the quantities and the sealing method need attention before you start.
- The fruit quantity is missingThe ingredient list gives only sugar and lemon, with no weight of peaches. Comparable marmalades of the period run roughly equal weights of prepared fruit and sugar, so 4 pounds of pitted, cut peaches is the sensible reading, but the original text does not state it.
- Peel or notThe instruction says only to wipe, halve and stone. Peach skins soften over a two-hour cook but leave the marmalade flecked and slightly bitter; blanch and slip the skins if you want a clear preserve. Four pounds of whole peaches yields about 3 1/2 pounds pitted.
- Cook slowly means slowlyTwo hours is not an error. Without added pectin the set comes from evaporation and from the slow breakdown of the fruit's own pectin, so hold a bare simmer over low heat and stir often as it thickens. Test with a spoonful chilled on a cold plate rather than by the clock.
- Scorching is the hingeAs the mixture thickens and reduces, sugar on the bottom of the pan can catch quickly. Use the widest heavy-bottomed pot you have and stir to the corners, not just the middle.
- Lemon lastAdding juice of 2 lemons at the end keeps its fresh flavour and lowers the pH for a better set; stirred in at the start, much of that fresh character is lost to the long cook. It also matters for safety in canning, since peaches sit near the edge of the high-acid range.
- "Glasses" and coveringThese were tumblers or jelly glasses, usually covered with a poured layer of melted paraffin, though paper covers were also used. Paraffin sealing is no longer considered sound; fill sterilised canning jars, or simply refrigerate the marmalade and use it within a month.
- The variationsQuince needs longer and more water; apricots behave much like peaches; plums and prunes carry more of their own pectin and will set sooner, so start plate-testing at about ninety minutes.
Lowney's Cook Book was published in 1907 by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and like other branded cookbooks of its day it surrounded its chocolate recipes with a full general household repertoire, preserving included. The word marmalade comes through French from the Portuguese marmelada, a stiff quince paste, marmelo being the quince; the citrus sense of the word is a later English narrowing. Preserving in a book of this period assumed a summer's glut of orchard fruit and a cellar shelf of tumblers sealed with wax, and the two-hour cook reflects a kitchen with no commercial pectin available, only sugar, acid and patience.