Marmalade

Having completed the marathon which is my version of marmalade, here is an account of it.

I set to work with some trepidation, because the oranges were so much bigger than they were when my mother made it and I work on number of fruit, rather than weight. 12 Seville oranges to 3 sweet oranges to 3 lemons. It is a very tedious job removing pips, slicing etc. I entertain myself with the television (or radio). It took me about 2 1/2 hours. The bowl you see was fairly full and then I had to add the same amount of water. In the end I had to leave 1 1/2 pints to add when it was being cooked. I think it is possible that I had miscounted at some point despite writing down each time I emptied the jug.

The string was attached to the muslin bag of pips. It sat here over night and some of the next day. Then into the jam pan (forgot to take a pic of that) plus the extra water, and on the AGA to boil. Unfortunately the stuff cooked very quickly, in about 15 minutes, so very little water was evaporated off. I guessed I was in for trouble the next day. Back to the bowl - it fitted in this time - and left again over night and until about 3.0pm.

Although I had bought some more sugar, when I came to weigh it out, there was not enough, so as well as the usual granulated, I had to use a kilo of the pale yellow stuff and a lb of demerara. I wasn't worried about that - it is nice to have a different colour and there wasn't enough to change the flavour too much. Anyway, back to the jam pan, heated up abit and then sugar added. Stirred on the cooler plate until the sugar was dissolved - an awful lot so took a long time. Then onto the hot plate to come to the boil. Why is it that this always happens when one isn't looking? Because the jam pan was pretty full I knew I was at risk!. Suddenly a nasty noise behind me and it had boiled over. Have you any idea how sticky marmalade is? Or how it can get about once escaped from the pan?. At least it kept to the top of the AGA but a lot went on the hotplate where it quietly burned, despite my efforts to wipe it off. Also stuck to - or burnt onto - the bottom of the pan. Despite the wintry weather I had to open a window and the conservatory door to get a through draft, so's I could breath! The one advantage was that the stuff burnt on the bottom prevented the pan sitting properly on the hot plate so it never got back to a rolling boil which would have led to further disaster. The other side of it was that it took 2 1/2 hours to reach setting point instead of 30 minutes!!!!! The whole thing brought back memories of an Irish cook that my parents had before the war, who also overboiled the marmalade but she managed to get it all over the kitchen!

In the end the setting point was reached and I was able to bottle the stuff - 15 jars, mostly old honey jars but 2 big ones, so really 17 which was what I had calculated.

What a performance! But worth it!