Thoughts, ideas and inspiration from a country gardener

I started making Seville orange marmalade seven years ago when my favorite food writer, Lucy Waverman, who has a Saturday column in Toronto’s Globe and Mail, wrote a column about marmalade-making.

It was my husband John, whose English background includes marmalade connoisseurship, who showed me that all marmalade is not created equally. When we got married, I learned that the usual supermarket brands did not pass muster, and that I had to buy Robertson’s thick-cut English marmalade.

But it was Waverman’s article that opened my eyes to what real marmalade was all about. It is made with Seville oranges, which are in season for about a month to six weeks, beginning at the end of January.

These oranges are so bitter and full of seeds that you wouldn’t dream of eating them like navel oranges, but they make the most amazingly delicious marmalade. It does not have the overly sweet cloying taste of most commercial marmalades.

While the oranges were in season over the past month, we made enough batches of marmalade to last us the year, and give a few extras as gifts. When I say we, this year, I enlisted my husband to do the stirring during the fast boil. (My computer-induced repetitive strain injuries are still so bad that I couldn’t do the stirring myself.)

One of the great things about making marmalade yourself is the wonderful citrusy fragrance of orange that permeates the kitchen, and makes you think you’re living in a tropical paradise for a bit.

The recipe for Seville orange marmalade is included in Lucy Waverman’s book, A Year in Lucy’s Kitchen: Seasonal Recipes and Memorable Meals (link goes to Amazon.com). “Fast boiling is the secret to a good flavour and quick set,” she writes. “If the marmalade sets quickly, it will retain a bright colour and fresh flavour.”

Here’s my adaptation of Waverman’s Seville orange marmalade.

Day one: Wash five Seville oranges and put them in a large pot and cover with water. Bring the water to a boil, cover and simmer for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. The oranges will turn very soft, but will still be intact. Let them cool in their cooking water (don’t discard the water). At this point, I call it a day and store them in the refrigerator. They keep in the refrigerator for up to five days.

Day two: I cut the oranges in half one by one, and scrape out the seeds, reserving them. Then I scrape out the flesh, and mush it up with a spoon, and cut up the peel. I like a fairly thick cut peel, so I cut it up with a knife, not chopping it in the food processor the way some recipes suggest. The oranges and reserved cooking water measure about four or five cups. This is important to note because you need to add the equivalent amount of sugar for the boil.

Day three: This is boil day. I add the sugar, about four cups worth, to the cut-up oranges and cooking water. I usually add the juice of half a lemon as well. I place the reserved seeds from the oranges into a cheesecloth bag. (The seeds are full of natural pectin, as is the flesh and the peel, so you want them in the boil, but you don’t want them in the marmalade.)

Waverman stresses that the boil should be fast, so you should keep the temperature quite high. I find that 15 minutes of rolling boil is enough. After the marmalade has boiled, I stir in about a quarter cup of Scotch. This is the secret ingredient to exceptional flavor.

When bottling, I usually put a teaspoon of Scotch at the bottom of the jar, and another teaspoon at the top — a special treat for the one who opens the jar and finishes it, usually my husband.

I sterilize the jars and lids, but since I store the marmalade in the refrigerator, I don’t do anything else. As the marmalade cools in the jars, there is a popping sound that indicates a vacuum has been created, so I find that it keeps well for months. If I make enough, we usually don’t run out until just before Seville oranges are back in the stores.

So there you have it — Seville orange marmalade — one of the joys of cooking and living seasonally.

Lucy Waverman’s cookbook is also available through Amazon.ca: A Year in Lucy’s Kitchen.

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I just found a great post about exotic citrus at the Saving the Season blog, which has a wonderful comparison of sweet versus bitter oranges:

“Imagine that if a sweet orange is morning time, then a Seville orange is midnight. If a sweet orange is pure, the Seville is worldly. A sweet orange, feminine; a Seville, masculine.”

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