No. 3676

Fig and Orange Marmalade or Jam

Marmelade de Figues et d'Oranges

Select large white, ripe, but very firm figs; remove the skins and cut up the fruits; weigh, and for each pound allow seven ounces of sugar dissolved in a little water. Boil this up once or twice, put in the figs and cook until the marmalade coats the skimmer and drops from it in beads, then pour into glass jars previously heated.

Orange Marmalade.—Choose some not too ripe oranges, remove their zests with the knife shown in Fig. 156, prick them with a coarse needle and put them in a pan with boiling water; cover them over to cook until the remaining skin becomes softened, then place in an abundance of cold water for twenty-four hours. Drain, open them, suppress the seeds, and pass the orange and peel through a sieve. Cook the same weight of sugar to "ball" (No. 171) as there is orange, mix both together and cook until the marmalade falls from the skimmer in a sheet.

← No. 3675 Apricot or Peach Marmalade or Jam Preserves & Conserves No. 3677 Melon Marmalade or Jam →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Two separate preserves printed under one heading, both relying on visual doneness tests rather than clock or thermometer. A candy thermometer resolves nearly all of the ambiguity.

The hinge: the skimmer test"coats the skimmer and drops in beads" is an earlier setting stage; "falls in a sheet" is the usual full-set test, when the last drops run together and break off as a curtain. The sheeting stage is conventionally put at around 220F/105C at sea level, and a thermometer plus a chilled-saucer test is more reliable than either.
"Ball" (No. 171)A cross-reference to Ranhofer's sugar-boiling degrees; "ball" is generally the soft-ball stage, around 235-240F. The orange method cooks the syrup to that point before the fruit pulp is mixed in.
The sugar ratioSeven ounces of sugar per pound of figs is about 44 percent by weight, well under the 1:1 of most modern jams. It gives a fresher-tasting, looser preserve that will not keep as long once opened.
White figsGreen- or yellow-skinned varieties such as Adriatic or Kadota. Ripe but very firm matters: soft figs collapse into puree before the syrup reduces.
The zesting knife (Fig. 156)The illustration is not reproduced here; any zester will do, but take only the coloured layer, since the white pith is what turns marmalade bitter. The 24-hour cold soak that follows is generally understood as a means of drawing out remaining bitterness.
Heated jars are not processingPouring hot preserve into hot jars was standard practice in 1894 and is not a substitute for a boiling-water bath. Figs are low in acid. Refrigerate and use within a few weeks, freeze, or follow a current tested recipe with measured added lemon juice if you intend to shelf-store.
YieldThe original gives none. Two pounds of prepared figs with sugar makes roughly three half-pint jars; the orange version, made with equal weights, gives a little more.

A Little History

This pair of entries comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the vast compendium he assembled after some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York. The preserve chapter reads like a working larder inventory rather than a set of home recipes: fruit was put up in quantity in season so the kitchen could produce ices, tart fillings and petits fours through the winter, which is why the instructions assume a cook who already knows the sugar-boiling scale and needs only the fruit-specific details. The orange method here, with its pricking, boiling, long cold soak and sieving, is the older French marmelade technique, closer to a smooth fruit paste than to the shred-suspended-in-jelly that British Seville marmalade had already made familiar by this date. The word itself is generally traced to the Portuguese marmelada, a stiff quince paste, quince being marmelo.