Oranges, Preserved
INGREDIENTS.-Oranges; to every lb. of juice and pulp allow 2 lbs. of loaf sugar; to every pint of water lb. of loaf sugar.
Wholly grate or peel the oranges, taking off only the thin outside portion of the rind.
Make a small incision where the stalk is taken out, squeeze out as much of the juice as can be obtained, and preserve it in a basin with the pulp that accompanies it.
Put the oranges into cold water; let them stand for 3 days, changing the water twice; then boil them in fresh water until they are tender, and put them to drain. Make a syrup with the above proportion of sugar and water, sufficient to cover the oranges; let them stand in it for 2 or 3 days, then drain them well. Weigh the juice and pulp, allow double their weight of sugar, and boil them together until the scum ceases to rise, which must all be carefully removed; put in the oranges, boil them for 10 minutes, place them in jars, pour over them the syrup, and, when cold, cover down. They will be fit for use in a week.
TIME.-3 days for the oranges to remain OX-CHEEK, STEWED. in water, 3 days in the syrup ; 1/2 hour to boil the pulp, 10 minutes the oranges.
SEASONABLE. - This preserve should be made in February or March, when oranges are plentiful.
A whole-fruit orange preserve of the old school: bitter Seville oranges soaked, boiled tender, candied slowly in syrup, and packed in their own reduced juice. Nothing about it is quick, but almost all of the time is unattended.
- The oranges intendedA February or March season in Victorian Britain points to Seville (bitter marmalade) oranges — sour, thick-skinned, and full of pectin. The recipe does not name a variety, but sweet eating oranges will give a flabbier, cloying result. Use Sevilles if you can get them.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined cane sugar broken from a cone; ordinary granulated white sugar is the direct equivalent by weight. The proportions matter more than the type: 2 lb sugar to 1 lb of juice and pulp for the final boil.
- The three-day soak is the hingeBitter oranges are unpleasantly harsh until the peel has been leached. Three days in cold water, changed twice, draws out the bitterness; skip or shorten it and the finished preserve will be acrid rather than pleasantly bitter.
- Missing sugar proportion for the syrupThe syrup ratio as printed has lost its fraction; the surviving text reads only "to every pint of water lb. of loaf sugar." Treat it as a light syrup whose job is to hold the fruit, not to set.
- Boiling the pulpThe time given for boiling the juice, pulp and sugar is half an hour, as printed. In practice, go by the instruction: boil until the scum ceases to rise, removing it carefully as you go.
- Cover down"Cover down" meant a hand-tied paper or waxed cover, sometimes over a brandy-soaked paper disc, not a modern vacuum seal. This is not a tested canning process — pot into clean hot jars, cool, and keep it in the refrigerator, using it within a couple of months.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity of oranges; weigh the juice and pulp you obtain and scale the sugar to it as directed. Serve the whole fruit sliced across, with its syrup, as a dessert preserve or alongside cream or rice pudding.
Preserving whole oranges rather than shredding them into marmalade is the older English treatment, descended from "succade" — fruit or peel repeatedly steeped in strengthening syrup until it turned translucent, a word and technique attested in English from the late medieval and sixteenth-century period. Sevilles arrived in British ports in a narrow late-winter window, which is why Beeton files the recipe as seasonable in February and March; households are generally said to have bought the year's supply at once and turned it into marmalade, wine, candied peel and preserves like this one before the fruit spoiled. The long cold soak reflects a real constraint of the bitter orange: its peel carries enough bitter glycoside to be unpalatable, and days of water-changing, rather than sugar alone, is what makes it edible.