Orange Marmalade more or less after Gervase Markham

[hrj]

There are any number of 16th c. orange marmalade recipes that are fairly similar, but just to have a reference point, I used Markham's as my guideline. He says:

To make an excellent marmalade of oranges, take the oranges, and with a knife pare off as thin as is possible the uppermost rind of the orange; yet in such sort as by no means you alter the colour of the orange; then steep them in fair water, changing the water twice a day, till you find no bitterness of taste therein; then take them forth, and first boil them in fair running water, and when they are soft, remove them into rose-water, and boil them therein till they break; then to every pound of the pulp put a pound of refined sugar, and so, having mashed and stirred them all well together, strain it through very fiar strainers into boxes, and so use it as you shall see occasion.

I don't quite get the point of the whole "pare off as thin as is possible" bit. If it were a matter of removing the entire outer rind and only using the pith and pulp, it might at least be interesting to try, but if you're paring off only part of the outer rind, then you aren't really altering any substantial aspect of the ingredients. If the point is to expose more of the interior to the steeping process, then it makes more sense to peel the orange entirely, since the bitterness is more in the pith than the outer rind. *shrug* In any event, since I wanted to save the juice separately, I diverged from the directions from the start by cutting the oranges in half to juice them, then quartered them to make them more manageable in the pan.

Take 12 Seville oranges and wash them. Cut in half to juice them and pick out the seeds. Quarter them and put in a pot with water to cover. To speed up the steeping process a little, I heated the oranges in multiple changes of water (about 4 total). This resulted in an approximate volume of 3 cups of beginning-to-be-mushy orange. Perhaps I should have tried the "boil in rosewater until they break" in the original version, but I took another shortcut by adding 3 c. sugar along with 1.5 c. rosewater and simmered them together. Things were going swimmingly with the peel getting mushier until I got distracted briefly just when it decided to change from "oranges in syrup" to "gelatinous mush". This resulted in the need to pick out a few small carmelized spots on the peel before the next step. But what I found when I mashed up the mixture and then worked it through a strainer was that it was already pretty well set up and gelled. But it was still in the pan, not in my cute little jelly jars. I added a little more rosewater (maybe a quarter cup -- the rest of what was in the bottle) and heated the marmalade very gently, stirring constantly, but it stubbornly refused to turn any more liquid (and I was worried about possibly scorching it) so I ended up spooning it in awkward lumps into the scalded jelly jars.

What I'm thinking is that if I'd cooked the oranges to a mush and pureed them before adding any of the sugar, then I could have approached the jelling point a bit more deliberately and jarred the results at a more optimum point. Still and all, the flaw is cosmetic rather than culinary, I think. The majority of the marmalade is in these cute little 1 oz single-serving jars that someone was off-loading at an event, with the rest in two 4-oz jars. I think I'll enter some in the preserved foods competition at coronet keep one of the larger jars for my own use, and set the small jars aside for gifts.

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

You know there is a legendary old recipe that begins "First catch your hare"? So, in that spirit: where did you find Seville oranges? I need a local source...

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Well, I went to the nursery and bought a tree ....

I really do need to put the tree in the ground sometime this month or so, but that means starting to decide which tree I want to put where. In any event, it gave me a nice dozen fruits despite being imprisoned in a plastic bucket, but I'll be surprised if it's quite as happy this coming year until it gets settled in the dirt a bit.

I can also find Seville oranges reliably at my favorite local grocery (the famous Berkeley Bowl) but I have a sneaking suspicion they've come and gone already, because in past years when I've made candied orange peel from them, it was in December. I can check for you, if you like.

[joycebre.livejournal.com]

Does the peel go into the marmalade or does Markham candy it separately? Or after reading it again, is he maybe peeling off any imperfections and releasing the oils into the mix right away?

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Totally unclear. The directions do seem to indicate that you're peeling off an incredibly small amount of peel, so the only thing that seemed to make sense was that you were making the fruit a bit more water-permeable for the soaking process. If it's to release the oils, then it must be in order to get rid of them, because this is at the stage when you're doing multiple changes of discarded water.

[kahnegabs.livejournal.com]

I have a lot of Washington Navels if those would do foryou. You'd need to pick them yourself however, as I've given up climbing ladders.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the offer. I'm playing around with recipes that would specifically have used the Seville-type orange, which is more sour and bitter than modern eating oranges, so I'm not sure that that significant a substitution would help me work out the process the way I want to.

[twistle.livejournal.com]

mums recipe is certainly for the seville-style oranges - they are not good for eating straight really.

[twistle.livejournal.com]

my mums recipe for orange marmalade is word of mouth from her mum - so this is with what ever warnings are found printed on the label.. but the reason she was doing this was that the very thin peel outside with no pith on it was cut up into very fine slices and put into the end jelly - so you were trying to avoid taking any of the bitterness with it into the end product.

sorry - crazy day at work - hope that translated to english

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I could see that making sense as a separate recipe, but since there's no mention of actually doing anything with the removed peel (and the intended texture of the marmalade is a smooth paste, not the "chunky peel" type now popular) it doesn't seem to be Markham's intent.

[hudebnik.livejournal.com]

I read the bit about peeling the outer part without changing the color as "take off some peel, with absolutely no pith, and then use the peel."

[hrj.livejournal.com]

The difficulty with that interpretation is that it doesn't seem to square with a product that is a soft mushy pulp. The outermost rind is the most resistant to turning to mush. When I do candied peel I try to stick to just the outermost peel as you suggest, but to some extent because it's best at remaining a solid piece throughout the process.