Orange you mad for marmalade?

A recipe for Britain’s favourite spread

(Before you start, I was advised that ‘TheWorldOnYourPlate’ became an acronym Charlie Brown would have pronounced *!!*! ‘Tabled’ is less of a mouthful - and more, I hope.)

My mother never did anything by halves. One summer, she had three heart attacks in as many weeks. Then she was run over by a 40-ton truck. Which left me to make the marmalade.

Not because she wasn’t capable. Quite the opposite. These various assaults upon her person shocked her into doing what she ought to have done for several decades. Namely, eaten right and a great deal less, exercised more (although any amount would have added to her previous Never), and generally paid affectionate attention to herself.

Suddenly, she became a new woman, a hospital stay melting her weight away by 20 kilos. She declared she wished she had had her near-death experiences back when she was 40 so she could have got into all her wispy new frocks when construction workers were still allowed to whistle.

Marmalade-making no longer suited her image.

So it fell to me to produce the only coating this family thinks fit for morning toast, jams and jellies being firmly relegated to tea-time. Once in a while, we make exceptions and go ‘foreign’, buying croissants for breakfast and authorising the purchase of a little apricot preserve.

Being responsible for our marmalade was a daunting prospect, one that conjured up a sticky kitchen full of the kind of paraphernalia I don't own and did not intend to buy, like a heavy copper pan, jam thermometer, and a jelly bag which, full, looks like something slung under a cow.

Marmalade beats Marmite, that other idiosyncratically British favourite spread, by nearly 3 million more users. A recipe appears as far back as 1587, in A Book of Cookrye. But we only became zealous consumers once it was known Queen Victoria kept a jar on her breakfast table, incorporating it into our literary heroes’ lives. Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Bertie Wooster and, most enthusiastically, Paddington Bear, were fans. British explorer Edmund Hillary bore a jar up Everest. Captain Scott packed stocks for his Antarctic expedition. On her visit after his inauguration, Theresa May gave Donald Trump a jar. (I may just have provoked an immediate slump in sales.)

Tradition has it that only Seville oranges are appropriate, their tartness an astringent counterpoise to the quantities of sugar employed in the recipe. Known, too, as ‘bitter orange’, ‘sour orange’, and bigarrade (the original orange in Duck à l’orange), it was introduced by the Moors to Spain from its native Southeast Asia in the 10th century, and the Spaniards introduced it to the New World. 

The Andalusians who grow it don’t actually eat it. They ship the annual 4 million kilo harvest almost entirely to Britain. In other countries, the bitter orange is used in pickles, bitters, and beers, in salad dressings, as flavourings or marinades, or candied for serving to visitors or bake into cakes.

Marmalade-makers prize the Seville for its high pectin, which results in an easier set than you get with a regular orange. If you don’t live in a place where they can be found, you can use ordinary oranges and add the juice of lemons for bitterness, along with their seeds lightly crushed. What you can’t rely on is seedless oranges. It is the pectin in the seeds of citrus fruit that thickens marmalade. Of course, you could always put your faith in the sugar that is sold specifically for preserves, which contains a thickening agent. I’m not insisting on purity here.

As to the process, what a breeze! Why wasn't I making marmalade eons ago? What was all the fuss about? It couldn't be simpler! So do try it yourself. It will make you feel an absolute "uber" cook. Plus it will leave you plenty of time to gallivant about the countryside with the wind through your hair instead of heading for the Preserves & Jams aisle at your supermarket. 

You might encounter the spirit of my mother.

Makes about 1.5/3.30lbs kilos

2kg/4.40lbs Seville oranges

Juice 2 lemons

1.5kg/3.30lbs light brown sugar or golden caster sugar

Scrub the oranges well to remove any wax coating or chemicals.

Put them in a large saucepan and, pushing them down with your hand, cover them with 8 cms/3ins water. Let them float up then bubble away uncovered at a low boil for 2 hours until they are squishy. Scoop them out, reserving the water. Pour ½ litre/18 fl.oz of this water into a separate pan.

Chop the oranges into the lengths and thickness you favour, dropping their seeds into the water pan.

Return the oranges to the larger pan with the lemon juice. Add the lemon seeds, lightly crushed, to those in the smaller pan. 

Boil the little pan gently for about 10 minutes to extract the pectin. Then strain into the larger pan and add the sugar. Stir until the sugar is dissolved completely. Boil until the mixture thickens. How long this takes depends on how many seeds you have included to release their pectin. You can play about dropping small teaspoonfuls onto a saucer chilled in the freezer and see if its skin wrinkles to the touch, which indicates it has set. But don't despair. It will happen once the whole brew turns a voluptuous deep amber. Just keep boiling away. If you like, you could add a couple of centimetres/1 inch of peeled and grated ginger at the end, or a glug of whisky. 

Sterilise storage jars by running them through a dishwasher cycle then fill with marmalade.