A 21st century good life in Bristol: part 3 - marmalade

Marmalade

Burn me at the stake. I’ve just committed marmalade heresy. Normally I make marmalade using my mother’s tried and tested method that takes over 24 hours (known in the Collins’ house as ‘ma’s malade’ and regarded as the finest use of Seville oranges known to humankind). But this year, I made half my batch using a pressure cooker method (I would tweak this recipe and give the oranges only 15 minutes full pressure).

It took 2 hours start to finish. It doesn’t look as lovely as the longer method but, after a blind tasting, all agreed that the quicker method was (look away now mother) almost as good. But not quite.

Marmalade is the one preserve I simply have to make. I’ve never found shop-bought stuff to compare to my mum’s (or even my own). My mother has made it every January of her married life and I am into my sixth year. This year, I reckon it cost about 40p a jar to make, compared to £2.50-£3 for the ‘finest’ shop-bought equivalent.

As January comes to an end, I start to get twitchy. I keep checking the greengrocer to see if the Seville’s have arrived. This year, I went early one morning, just as the shop was opening and saw they were selling big, beautiful Seville’s for 38p a pound. I bought 10 pounds.

The trouble with 10lbs of oranges is that you have to slice them up thinly. This can take hours using the old Collins recipe. So I roped in my wife and a friend and we spent a fun evening chopping up half the oranges plus some lemons.

In fact, here’s the recipe:
For every 2lbs of oranges
1-2 lemons
1 sweet orange
4lbs of sugar (Seville’s are so bitter you need lots of sugar)

- First, squeeze the juice out of the oranges and put this in a bowl.
- Then remove pips and as much pith and orange ‘middle’ as you can. Put this all into a muslin bag, tie it up and add to the bowl.
- Slice the orange and lemon peel to your preferred thickness. I like mine thin. Some people are lucky enough to have an electric slicer though I think this rather mashes up the finished product.
- Add peel to bowl and then add four pints of water.
- Leave for 24 hours.
- Then bring it all to a hard boil until the peel disintegrates when rubbed between two fingers. The liquid should have reduced by about half.
- Remove bag of pips and pith and squeeze the sticky pectin out. This magically helps the marmalade to set.
- Add sugar (it dissolves quicker if you heat it in the oven first)
- After 10-15 minutes test for setting (put a few drops on a cold plate – it should wrinkle to the touch). If it doesn’t, boil hard for another 5 minutes.
- Allow marmalade to cool slightly before pouring into warmed, sterlised jars.

So now I have a mountain of marmalade but 1. I’ll never run out. 2. It make a rather beautiful gift that people always love receiving.

You can also find another recipe for marmalade from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's favourite jam maker in the February edition of Countryfile Magazine

Fergus Collins

Fergus Collins is the editor of Countryfile Magazine and enjoys growing, foraging and harvesting his own food from his home in Bristol.