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Date Marmalade
2 cups dates 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon rind 1/2 teaspoon grated orange rind 2 teaspoons butter 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon Immerse the dates in cold water. Remove the stones, and wash in hot water. Put seeded dates to cook in an equal quantity of boiling water, together with the grated lemon rind, and cook until tender and quite dry.
A short, elastic recipe: the method ends with the dates cooked down, and three of the listed ingredients are never mentioned again. Treat the list as the finish and the paragraph as the cooking.
- The unused ingredientsButter, cinnamon and orange rind appear in the list but not the method. Beat them in off the heat once the dates have collapsed and the pan is dry; the butter gives gloss and the aromatics are wasted if boiled long.
- "Cook until tender and quite dry"This is the hinge. Dates plus an equal volume of water reduces to a stiff paste in roughly 15-25 minutes over low heat, and it must be stirred toward the end or the sugars catch. Stop when a spoon drawn through the pan leaves a track that holds.
- Which datesA drier date such as Deglet Noor suits the equal-volume water better than soft Medjool, which carry far more moisture; with those use less water and expect a shorter cook. The recipe does not say which variety was intended.
- Stoning themThe cold-water soak and hot wash would have suited dried dates sold loose, which often needed cleaning. Modern packaged pitted dates need neither step, though a brief hot rinse loosens any sugar glaze.
- Grated rindZest only the coloured layer; the white pith turns the marmalade bitter. Half a teaspoon of each is a small amount -- well under half a lemon and half a small orange.
- Yield and useTwo cups of dates gives roughly one to one and a quarter cups of thick paste. It is a spread and a filling for turnovers, bar cookies and steamed puddings rather than a spoonable dessert.
- Keeping itDespite the name there is no sugar boil and no canning step here. Refrigerate in a covered jar and use within a week or two, or freeze.
"Marmalade" in a book of this vintage may still carry its older, broader sense: any fruit cooked down to a stiff, sliceable or spreadable mass, from the Portuguese marmelada, a quince paste. The narrowing of the word to bitter-orange preserve is a later British habit, and American cookbooks of the early twentieth century used it freely for figs, dates and apples. Dates were sold pressed into blocks or loose by the pound, cheap, sweet and shelf-stable, which is part of why they turn up in economy cookery: concentrated sweetness without a sugar boil.