No. 3674

Apple Marmalade or Jam

Marmelade de Pommes

Quarter some apples, core and cut up small; put them into a basin with the juice of several lemons and a little water; cook. As soon as done pour on a sieve to drain, pressing them through afterward. Add to this pulp three-quarters of its weight of lump sugar, and stir well together. Pour it all into a tinned copper pan and stand it on the fire to cook the marmalade until it coats the spatula and drops from it in beads; stir continuously with a spatula. As soon as it is done pour into stone pots that have been previously heated.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Charles Ranhofer assumes a cook who can read a sugar syrup by eye, so the one thing the text does not spell out is the finish. Everything else is straightforward once the units are translated.

The hinge: cooking to the bead"Coats the spatula and drops from it in beads" is the setting point, roughly 220F/104C on a candy thermometer at sea level, or the stage where a spoonful chilled on a cold saucer wrinkles when pushed. Apples are high in pectin, so this comes faster than with stone fruit; pull it the moment it beads rather than cooking to a stiffer mass.
Lump sugarLoaf or lump sugar was refined cane sugar broken from a cone or pressed block, valued because it was cleaner than the yellowish grades. Ordinary granulated sugar is a close modern substitute.
Three-quarters of its weightWeigh the drained pulp and add 75 percent of that weight in sugar: 1 lb pulp to 12 oz sugar, 500 g to 375 g. It is less sugar than the equal-weight ratio also used in the period, so expect a fresher, more acidic result and a shorter keeping life once opened.
Tinned copperCopper was used for its even heat, and the tin lining kept the acidic fruit off the bare metal. Any modern wide, heavy-bottomed stainless steel or enamelled pan does the same job; avoid unlined copper or bare cast iron, which will discolour the fruit and pick up a metallic taste.
Basin and sieveThe "basin" is simply a bowl or saucepan for the first cooking; the apples are cored first, and it is the skins that are left in and strained out. A food mill or a coarse sieve pressed with the back of a ladle reproduces the texture, which should be smooth rather than chunky.
Lemon juice"The juice of several lemons" gives no quantity. For 3 lb of apples, 2 to 3 tablespoons is enough to brighten the flavour and support the set; more if the apples are sweet supermarket varieties rather than sharp cooking apples.
Stone pots, and storageHeating the pots prevented cracking when the boiling jam went in, and the sugar plus a wax or paper seal did the preserving. For anything intended to sit in a cupboard, follow current water-bath canning guidance for jams; otherwise treat it as a refrigerator preserve and use it within a few weeks.
YieldAbout 3 lb of apples gives roughly four half-pint jars. Good on toast, but in this book it is equally a filling for tarts, charlottes and dartois.

A Little History

In French kitchen usage marmelade means a fruit pulp cooked down with sugar to a smooth, spreadable mass, with no implication of citrus peel; the English narrowing of the word to orange preserve is a local quirk. The term is generally traced to Portuguese marmelada, a stiff quince paste, from marmelo, quince, which is why the oldest of these preparations are firm enough to slice. Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York and author of The Epicurean (1894), includes a long run of these numbered marmalades because a professional kitchen needed them constantly as tart fillings, glazes and the base of charlottes, not merely as breakfast spreads. Apples earn their place at the head of the sequence for a practical reason: they were cheap, kept through the winter, and are rich enough in natural pectin and acid to set reliably without the commercial pectin that would not become a household product until the following century.