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Orange Marmalade (II)
Mrs. J. Young Scammon.
One dozen Seville oranges, one dozen common oranges, one dozen lemons; boil the oranges and lemons whole in water for five hours; scoop out the inside, removing the seeds; cut the peel into thin slices with a knife, and add to every pound of pulp and peel a pint of water and two pounds of sugar. Boil twenty minutes.
A whole-fruit marmalade of the old Scottish type, scaled for a household that put up preserves by the crate. Everything about it works, but the quantities and the boiling time both belong to another century.
- Scale firstThirty-six pieces of fruit, with two pounds of sugar and a pint of water for every pound of pulp and peel, will yield a very large quantity of finished marmalade -- comfortably more than 20 lb. A third of the recipe is a full day's work and still fills a dozen jars; a sixth is a sensible trial batch.
- Seville orangesThese are the bitter marmalade oranges, in season roughly January and February and sold as Seville or bitter oranges. They are not interchangeable with navels. If none can be had, use all sweet oranges and add the juice of extra lemons for acidity, accepting that the result will be sweeter and less aromatic.
- "Common oranges"Ordinary sweet eating oranges of the period, thinner-skinned and seedier than a modern navel. Any sweet orange serves.
- Five hours is too longWhole citrus simmers tender in about 1.5 to 2 hours, depending on size; a skewer should pass through the peel with no resistance. Five hours was insurance in a kitchen with an unreliable range and it leaches out flavour. Keep the fruit submerged, weighted with a plate if it bobs.
- Keep the seedsThe pips and the white membrane hold most of the pectin. Rather than discarding them, tie them in a square of muslin and boil them with the pulp and sugar, then squeeze the bag out and remove it before potting. Without them this proportion of water can set slackly.
- Sugar ratioTwo pounds of sugar to one pound of fruit is at the sweet end, though not unusual for marmalade; what sets this version apart is how little water goes with it, only a pint to the pound. It gives a firm, sweet, keeping marmalade. Weigh the pulp and peel together after scooping, as the recipe intends.
- Twenty minutes is a guide, not a ruleBoil hard and test for set: 220F on a thermometer, or a spoonful chilled on a cold saucer that wrinkles when pushed. Depending on your pan and batch size this may take 20 minutes or 40.
- PottingThe original assumes jars sealed with paper and wax. Use clean hot jars and either process filled jars in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes or refrigerate them and use within a couple of months.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from contributions by the city's leading households and sold for charity, which is why so many entries carry a donor's name rather than a title of their own; Mrs. J. Young Scammon was the wife of the banker and civic figure Jonathan Young Scammon. Marmalade itself takes its name from the Portuguese marmelada, a stiff quince paste, and only shifted decisively to citrus in Britain, where the bitter orange version is generally traced to eighteenth-century Scotland and Dundee in particular. That a Chicago banker's wife could specify a dozen Seville oranges alongside a dozen common ones says a good deal about the reach of the era's rail and steamship trade: both kinds of fruit reached an inland city in usable condition, in winter, in quantity enough to boil for five hours and put up by the crate.