It’s marmalade time of year!
This makes me feel particularly nostalgic. The ritual of buying the Seville oranges; enough for Mum to make enough marmalade for an entire year, set in pretty much as soon as the shops opened up again after Christmas! Dad would go out of his way on his buying trips to make sure he passed somewhere selling Seville oranges on the way home. He even used to bring them back from his Spanish trips. The whole family usually did the same thing scouring the counties’ farm shops for Sevilles, which led to there being an overly optimistic amount of oranges for the marmalade, which pleased Dad enormously.
Mum had to freeze them so that there was no fear of Dad running out of marmalade until the sevilles were available again.
I have to admit, Dad was a bit of a marmalade snob, nothing available from the shops was ever good enough and we all become somewhat biased fans of that rather dark, bitter, orangey jam that he would laden onto his toast every morning without fail. Only Mum’s would do.
Mrs Beeton (the recipe book Bible in our house) came out and the same old threadbare page would be turned to (as if Mum didn’t know it off by heart) and discussions about pectin, preserving sugar (and its availability) and length of boiling time for the perfect set, were always discussed. It just became part of the ritual.
A little bit like stirring the Christmas puds, tradition dictated that we all had to have a go at sitting at the kitchen table with a sharp knife and a fork to thinly slice the bitter outside skin of the oranges once they had been softened, gradually emptying the cooked oranges out of their cooking juice, carefully removing the pips (to go in a muslin bag) before they are all returned to the pan, pips and all, for the next stage of the cooking process. The aroma of cooking oranges wafted all around the house making a comforting welcome at the end of the day. Orange slicing usually being an evening activity.
Mum used to have a clever way of seeing if the marmalade was set. After boiling the sliced oranges once returned to the pan, the ‘jam’ would reduce. She would put a small amount on a saucer, and as it cooled it would thicken as the natural pectin in the seeds would work their magic. Once it had set on the saucer you knew it was ready for bottling in the jars. The jars would be sterilized in the oven and come out too hot to handle, so we had to wait for them to cool down before we could ‘bottle’ the marmalade. We then cut out little waxed discs and then put a cellophane lid over the top with a rubber band around it. We then had to find the lids to match the jars, and there was always one lid missing.
Once cooled they were then labelled and dated and put up on the top shelf in the pantry for gradual consumption. Dad would greet the breakfast table with glee when the new marmalade was stocked up.
Well, I’ve tried my best, Mum. I think Dad would like my first batch which is particularly bitter! But I’m having another go, as I think it might even be a bit too bitter for his palate.
