Food Of Gods…and Peruvian Bears
“Bought marmalade? Oh dear, I call that very feeble.” — Julian Fellowes
The first time I tried marmalade I was pretty disappointed. All I knew of the stuff was that it was beloved by Paddington the Peruvian bear who had somehow made his way to the London railway station he was named for. When I finally had some for the first time, I found it sweet but at the same time unpleasantly bitter. What did I know? I was eight years old!
I came to love marmalade, the more bitter the better. For a time, my ‘go to’ marmalade was Dundee’s Three Fruit that came in a white jar and is made with oranges, lemons and grapefruit. Dundee was a brand established in Scotland in 1797 by grocer James Keiller. Keiller bought a load of bitter Spanish Seville oranges on speculation and, according to legend, his wife had the brilliant idea of turning them into marmalade thus inventing this citrus preserve. Dundee’s is thick cut, meaning there are large bits of citrus rind in it, but the chunks were still never thick enough for me.
I can rarely find Dundee’s anymore and almost never the Three Fruit kind. And the white jar, sadly, has been replaced with plain glass so now when I get a craving for the stuff, I make my own. It’s crazy how easy it is. Here’s how.
Note: If you hate marmalade, the same process can be used to make jam with any kind of fruit or berries. Or just stop reading right now.
Homemade Marmalade
There are just two ingrediants. Three, if you count water.
citrius fruit, sugar, water.
Take some citrus fruit, it doesn’t matter how much. If you only want to make one jar, a couple of pieces will suffice. Seville oranges are traditional but you can use pretty much any orange, lemon, or grapefruit or a combination. I have never used limes, but they should also work just fine.
Since you are going to be boiling and eating the whole fruit including the rind, I highly suggest using organic fruit if you can get it. If you can’t, wash the fruit very well. If it is organic, wash it anyway.
Slice the fruit in half lengthwise and then slice perpendicular into thin half-moons. You can vary the thickness depending on how thick you want the fruit rind in your final product.
Cut the fruit on a board or something that can catch the juice. If you have a wooden board that you use for chopping onions or garlic, you might want to avoid using that so the jam doesn’t taste of onions.
Place all the sliced fruit and accumulated juices in a measuring cup. Push it down and note the volume. Pour the fruit, seeds and all it a pot and add an equal volume of water. Citrus seeds have a lot of pectin which helps the final product gel. Eventually you will remove them but not yet.
Boil the fruit and water on a low simmer for 2 hours. Turn off and let sit overnight.
The next day fish out the seeds with a slotted spoon. Conveniently, the seeds turn a dark color so they are easy to see. After removing all the seeds measure the volume of the fruit and water again and add back to the pot along with an equal quantity of white sugar. Yes, that is a lot of sugar. It doesn’t have to be super exact because when you cook it, water evaporates until the sugar to fruit ratio is correct. In essence, it adjusts itself.
Place over a medium heat and gently stir until all the sugar has melted. Then bring to a boil and adjust the heat to a low simmer.
Now comes the tricky part. Cook until done.
How do you know when it is done? Here’s how.
Take a small plate and place it in the freezer.
After some time, maybe an hour, the liquid will start to look thicker. The bubbles will be bigger and rise more slowly. It should start to coat a spoon. Think of sugar that is starting to caramelize.
When you think it might be done, take the plate from the freezer and place a small spoonful of the liquid on the plate. After a moment or two push it with your finger. You should see that it is gelling and becoming more solid like, well, jam. If you are not sure, let it go longer and try again. How long you let it cook depends a bit on how solid you like your marmalade. Remember it gets more solid as it cools and sets and when you refrigerate it.
Close to the gel point. Note the gelled bits on the side of the pot.
When you think it is about there, turn off the heat, let it rest a few minutes and then spoon it into as many glass jars as you need. I would not use plastic as the jam is hot and could melt the plastic. After the jars cool, place them in the fridge.
If you are not going to can the jam by sterilizing and sealing the jars (a whole process I am not going to get into here), you need to keep the final product refrigerated just as you would with an open jar of jam.
It will keep for a long time in the fridge. Sugar is an incredible preservative. Unless you see mold growing in it, it should be fine to eat. I have had a jar of marmalade in the fridge for months. You only use a little at a time after all. If you are lucky, some the sugar might crystalize around the edges.
I recently made a batch using just organic lemons, bright and sweet with just a little bitterness. It is divine stuff and is amazing on a fresh buttered roll with a cup of coffee.
There are things that can be made at home and should be made at least once just for fun and to understand the process but in general are not worth the trouble. The store-bought versions are perfectly good, thank you very much. Examples of these include: butter, mayonnaise, pasta, ice cream, peanut butter.
On the other end of the spectrum are things that must be made at home (at least in the US). These include: pita bread, hummus, pasta sauce, whipped cream, salad dressing.
Marmalade is somewhere in between. If you find a brand you like, the store-bought kind can be decent. But if, like me, and your marmalade can never have too much ‘thick cut’ fruit in it, then this is easy to do. You’ll have Mrs. Keiller eating her heart out – with your marmalade on it.