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Grape-Fruit Marmalade
6 grapefruit Sugar and water Wash the fruit; remove the skin and cut it into short thin strips or run it through the chopper. Then cut the fruit into small pieces, discarding the seeds. Weigh the skin and pulp and to each pound add two pints of water. Let stand over night; then boil the fruit in the same water until it is tender. Remove from the fire; measure carefully; and to each pint of fruit and juice add one and a quarter pounds of sugar. Return to the fire and boil until the fruit is transparent and the juice a rich syrup.
A two-day marmalade built on weight and volume ratios rather than fixed quantities, which makes it flexible but demands a scale and a measuring jug. The whole method hinges on the overnight soak: that is where the pectin comes out of the peel and membrane, and skipping it gives a syrup that never sets.
- Grapefruit then and nowPink and red cultivars such as Ruby Red and Star Ruby are later introductions; the fruit available when this was written would have been a white-fleshed, seedy type, and probably sharper than a modern Ruby Red. If you want the old edge, use white grapefruit or leave more of the white pith attached to the peel.
- "Remove the skin"This means the whole rind, pith included, which is where most of the pectin sits. Slice it thin -- 2 to 3 mm -- because peel does not soften further once sugar goes in.
- The water ratioTwo pints of water per pound of fruit is generous by current standards and means a long reduction. The pint is most likely the US 16 fl oz measure, though the book does not say; a British pint would be 20 fl oz. If you prefer a shorter boil, drop to about a pint and a half per pound and accept a slightly firmer set.
- Boiling the peel tenderReckon 45 minutes to an hour and a half of gentle simmering before any sugar is added, and test by pressing a strip of peel between finger and thumb. Sugar sets the peel permanently, so tough peel at that stage stays tough.
- Sugar and the set pointOne and a quarter pounds of sugar to each pint of fruit and juice is a high-sugar formula. "Transparent fruit and a rich syrup" corresponds roughly to the modern setting point, about 220F/104C, or a wrinkling drop on a chilled saucer, though the book gives no temperature.
- Cook in batchesSix grapefruit plus that much water is a large volume. Use a wide, heavy pan filled no more than a third, or split the sugar stage into two pans -- deep narrow pots scorch and take far longer to reach setting point.
- SealingThe book assumes you know what to do with the finished preserve and says nothing about jars. Follow current guidance for a boiling-water bath: hot sterilised jars, quarter-inch headspace, and 10 minutes' processing for half-pints.
- YieldThe recipe's ratios make this a large batch, and the exact number of jars is hard to predict: it depends on the size of the fruit and how far you reduce the syrup.
Marmalade in the English tradition meant quince paste before it meant citrus -- the word comes through Portuguese marmelada, from marmelo, quince -- and only shifted to bitter-orange preserve over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Grapefruit marmalade is a much later and distinctly American arrival: commercial Florida citrus groves made the fruit cheap and widely available in the decades either side of 1900, and grapefruit turned up first on hotel breakfast menus as a fashionable novelty and then in home preserving chapters like this one. The two-stage method -- long soak, tender-boil, then sugar -- is the standard citrus marmalade technique of the period, and it survives essentially unchanged because it draws pectin from the peel without a commercial additive.