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Marmalades
HESE are really the same as jams, the only difference being that for marmalade only the larger fruits are used, while jam proper is always made of berries. Marmalade requires a little more cooking than jam, and will keep well in glasses or pots made for the purpose.
ORANGE MARMALADE No. 1-Rather sour oranges and those with thin, smooth skins, are the best for this purpose. Weigh the oranges and allow three-fourths their weight in sugar. Remove the peel in quarters. Cover the peel with boiling water and cook until tender. Drain, cool, and remove the inner white part of peel with a spoon. Cut this thin yellow rind into thin strips with a pair of sharp scissors. Divide the oranges into sections, remove the white skin and seeds, place in preserving kettle, and, when at the boiling point, commence adding the sugar gradually. Cook slowly for one hour. Add the bits of rind and cook one hour longer. Pour into glasses.
ORANGE MARMALADE, No. 2-The following recipe makes a small quantity and the proportions may be easily doubled. One grapefruit, one lemon, two oranges. Cut the fruit very thin, taking out all seeds. Cover with two and one-half quarts of cold water and let stand until next day. Then boil ten or fifteen minutes. The following day add two and one-half quarts of sugar (scant) and boil for one hour and a quarter. Put up in jelly glasses or small jars.
Two workable marmalades from the era before commercial pectin, when the set came entirely from long boiling and the natural pectin in citrus peel and pith. The main adjustments are in sealing and in knowing when to stop cooking.
- The hinge: cook to the setting point, not the clockThe stated hour or hour and a quarter is a guide from a coal range, not a rule. Boil to 220-222F on a candy thermometer, or until a spoonful chilled on a cold saucer wrinkles when pushed. Sweet modern eating oranges may need longer than written to reach a set.
- "Pour into glasses"This most likely means jelly glasses sealed with a disc of melted paraffin, a method no longer considered a sound seal, though the recipe itself does not say so. Ladle into hot half-pint canning jars, leave a quarter inch of headspace, and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. Marmalade is acidic and heavily sugared, so a short bath is all it needs.
- Two and one-half quarts of sugarSugar was commonly measured by volume in this book. Ten cups of granulated sugar weighs about 4 lb 6 oz. "Scant" means to fall a little short of level measure, which matters when the total liquid is also 2.5 quarts.
- Weight ratio in No. 1Three-fourths the weight of the oranges in sugar is a low-sugar marmalade by modern standards and will set softer and keep less reliably.
- Preserving kettleKettles of the period could be copper or brass, which reacts with fruit acid over a long boil, though enameled and tinned wares were also common. Use a wide, heavy stainless or enameled pan. Width matters more than depth: evaporation is what concentrates the sugar.
- Choosing the oranges"Rather sour oranges" may point to a bitter variety such as Seville, sold mainly in mid to late winter, though the recipe's call for thin, smooth skins does not fit Seville fruit. Navel or Valencia oranges will make a sweeter, looser marmalade; add the juice of a lemon per pound of fruit to compensate for the missing acid.
- The overnight soak in No. 2Standing the sliced fruit in cold water draws pectin out of the peel and pith and softens the rind so it does not toughen once sugar goes in. Do not skip it or shorten it, and keep the bowl refrigerated in a warm kitchen.
- YieldThe recipe gives no fruit weight for No. 1, so the yield cannot be pinned down; No. 2 fills several half-pint jars. The recipe notes correctly that it doubles without trouble, though a doubled batch takes noticeably longer to reach the setting point.
Marmalade began as something firmer than this: the word comes from the Portuguese marmelada, a stiff quince paste (marmelo is quince) that reached England in boxes in the sixteenth century and was sliced rather than spread. The shift to a loose, bitter, citrus preserve is generally traced to Scotland in the eighteenth century, and the Keiller firm of Dundee is traditionally credited with putting chopped Seville peel into commercial production. The Butterick book's opening note, distinguishing marmalade from jam by the size of the fruit, reflects an American classroom tidiness about preserve categories that was typical of domestic science writing around 1910. That No. 2 combines grapefruit with orange and lemon is itself a marker of the period: grapefruit had only recently become a common breakfast fruit in the United States, Florida groves having made it cheap enough to boil down with sugar.