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Orange Marmalade
1 dozen oranges 1/2 dozen lemons Sugar and water Select fruit that is firm and not too ripe. Omit the lemons if preferred. With a sharp knife slice the fruit very thin, throwing away the ends and removing the seeds. Weigh, and to each pound of fruit add two pints of cold water. Let this stand over night; then boil the fruit in the same water until it is tender. Remove from the fire; weigh again; and to each pound of fruit and liquid add one pound of sugar. Boil until the fruit is transparent and the juice a rich syrup.
A classic two-day marmalade worked entirely by weight, which makes it easy to scale up or down. The only thing missing is the finish: Mrs. Fryer tells you how to cook the marmalade but not how to put it up.
- The hinge: weigh twiceWeigh the sliced fruit before soaking (2 pints water per pound), then weigh fruit and cooking liquid together after boiling and match that with an equal weight of sugar. Skipping the second weighing is the usual way this recipe goes wrong, since a good deal of water boils off.
- Scale in metricA pint here is 16 fl oz, so 2 pints per pound is roughly 2 litres of water per kilo of fruit. Equal weights of fruit-plus-liquid and sugar is a 1:1 preserve, standard for marmalade.
- Slicing"Very thin" probably means something on the order of 2 mm, peel and flesh together. A mandoline or a serrated knife on chilled fruit gives the most even shreds; the recipe sets no cooking time, and thick-cut peel will take considerably longer to soften.
- Keep the seedsThe pips, pith and the discarded ends are among the most pectin-rich parts of the fruit. You can tie them in a square of muslin, soak and boil them with the fruit, then squeeze and remove before the sugar goes in. The recipe discards them, and it also makes the lemons optional, so if you leave the lemons out you lose that source of acid and pectin too.
- TimesThe first boil, before sugar, will likely run 45 minutes to an hour, until the peel crushes easily between finger and thumb. After the sugar is added, expect roughly 20 to 40 minutes at a hard rolling boil; the book gives no temperature, but "transparent fruit and a rich syrup" corresponds to the usual setting point of about 220F / 105C at sea level.
- Testing the setPut a saucer in the freezer at the start. Drop a teaspoon of the syrup on it, wait a minute, and push it with a finger: if it wrinkles, it is done. Marmalade continues to thicken as it cools.
- Fruit choiceFirm and not too ripe is deliberate — pectin declines as fruit ripens. This recipe assumes sweet oranges; Seville oranges, if you can get them in winter, give a bitter marmalade instead.
- Putting it upThe book assumes you know the rest. Ladle boiling hot into clean hot half-pint jars, leave 1/4 inch headspace, and process in a boiling water bath according to current canning guidance for your altitude. Unprocessed jars keep in the refrigerator for a few weeks.
- YieldThis makes a large batch; the exact number of half-pint jars depends on how much liquid remains at the second weighing and how far you boil it down, so have more jars ready than you think you need.
Marmalade began as a quince paste — the word comes through French from Portuguese marmelada, from marmelo, quince — and only shifted to mean a citrus preserve in Britain, where bitter Seville oranges arrived in the winter and had to be used quickly. The overnight soak does real work: it softens the peel and draws pectin out of pith and pips without a long, punishing boil. That Mrs. Fryer places it under Canning and Preserving, and makes lemons optional, suggests — though this is inference rather than anything she says outright — that her readers were working with sweet dessert oranges rather than Sevilles, and needed the lemon for acid and set rather than for bitterness. Working by weight rather than by cup is the older, more reliable habit, and it survives in this recipe.