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Marmalades
Marmalade may be made of almost any fruits. If berries are used, press them through a sieve to remove seeds; if large fruit, pare, quarter and core it. Measure the fruit and sugar, allowing one pint of sugar to every quart of fruit. Rinse the preserving kettle in cold water; put in alternate layers of fruit and sugar, making the first layer of fruit. Heat slowly, stirring to prevent the fruit from sticking. Cook for about two hours; put in small sterilized jars.
This is a master method rather than a single recipe, and it assumes a cook who knows what thickened fruit looks like in the pan. Two things need attention: the sugar is low by modern standards, and no processing step is given.
- The ratio, in cupsOne pint of sugar to one quart of fruit is 2 cups sugar to roughly 4 cups prepared fruit — about half the sugar most modern jam recipes use. That is enough for flavor and body but not enough to make the jar reliably shelf-stable on its own.
- Sealing is not covered"Put in small sterilized jars" is open-kettle canning, which current practice has abandoned. Either treat the result as a refrigerator or freezer preserve (a few weeks cold, months frozen), or follow a current tested recipe with a boiling-water-bath time for the jar size.
- Rinsing the kettleThe cold-water rinse is not cleaning; the traditional explanation is that a film of water on the metal buys a moment before the sugar catches. A heavy-bottomed pan matters more.
- Preserving kettleUse a wide, heavy, non-reactive pan — stainless or enameled. Bare aluminum can react with the fruit acid and dull color and taste; unlined copper preserving pans were traditional for jam-making, though modern advice generally steers away from them. Width matters: evaporation is what thickens marmalade.
- Two hours is a ceiling, not a targetModern practice cooks jam hard and fast to keep the fruit flavor bright. Judge by the finish instead of the clock: 220F on a candy thermometer at sea level, or a spoonful that sets when chilled on a cold plate. Soft berry pulp may reach that in 30-45 minutes.
- Fruits that need help"Almost any fruit" glosses over pectin and acid. Ripe peaches, pears, cherries and figs set poorly; a tablespoon or two of lemon juice per quart of fruit, or a portion of underripe fruit, gives the acid the set depends on.
- Layering the sugarStarting with fruit on the bottom and alternating layers lets the sugar draw juice out before the heat goes on, so nothing scorches dry. Letting it stand an hour before heating improves this further.
- YieldFour cups of fruit with 2 cups sugar cooks down to roughly three to four half-pint jars, depending on how far you take the reduction.
The word comes through Portuguese marmelada, a stiff paste of quinces (marmelo), and for centuries in English marmalade meant something you sliced rather than spread. The narrowing of the term to bitter-orange preserve is largely a British development; American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries kept the older, broader sense visible, using "marmalade" for any fruit crushed or sieved to a pulp and cooked with sugar until thick — as distinguished from jelly (strained juice), jam (crushed fruit, less reduced) and preserves (fruit kept in recognizable pieces). That is exactly the distinction this entry rests on, and it explains why the instructions bother to tell you to sieve berries and quarter large fruit: the defining feature is the uniform pulp.