Marmalade Making - French Seville Style

[Cheese Head]

Last week I was in Vancouver Canada just before the Winter Olympics visiting my folks (born in England) where I helped my Dad make Seville Orange Marmalade (my first time making jam since kid) as Seville Oranges are in season and as rainy day (common in Vancouver, my folks say not raining, just drizzling ). Was two weeks until Winter Olympics start there, sadly minimal snow in mountains behind Vancouver. Some background from my Dad:

• Old days of Britain, ships used to sail down to Spain & Portugal, anchor offshore of orange plantations (as not many natural ports in either country) and buy oranges off of farmer's rowing out to ships with their harvest. Oranges went into hold of ship filled with seawater so that they floated and didn't crush bottom ones and so that softened on trip back to Britain.
• In British colonial days, used to ship taste of home (marmalade) to troops in India etc for their breakfast toast.
• Annual Marmalade making competition in Britain in Jan - Feb.
• Bitter non-eating oranges such as Seville should be fine cut as very strong flavour. Sweet regular sized eating oranges can be thick cut, sweet huge eating oranges have too thick a rind.

For this batch, 16 regular size Seville Oranges (5 lb 14 oz total) were a bit dry, best to find moistest ones as easier to work with and better yield. Before using, we removed any stickers, stalk remnants, & washed oranges. Recipe and his notes from previous and this batch below. Pictures have description of steps, in addition we used box cutter type construction knives fully extended to cut pulp off of rinds by pressing down hard on wedges with knife on cutting board on edge of table. Found easiest if made rough cut then fine cut to remove most of pulp. We didn't add regular oranges or lemon juice, stared making first day then left preboiled rinds overnight, then finished on second day. We boiled in two saucepans as he didn't have a large enough single stockpot (need pot about three time volume of jam as can boil up high with sugar). Jars and lids were dishwasher washed, then heated in oven to avoid cracking when adding boiling jam. After lidding the jam, for next hour you could hear the occasional "pop" as the lids concaved down from cooling and shrinking jam and air inside. After cooled and washed outside of jars, we labeled with removable construction masking tape "Seville 2010". Jam had great taste, nice set, spreadable, not like some store bought marmalade where can't spread.

INGREDIENTS

• 13.5 oz Peel of Seville Orange, de-pithed and finely cut, about 8 oranges
• 23.5 oz Crushed fruit of Seville Orange, about 8 oranges
• 48 oz Crushed fruit of regular sweet orange
• 14 oz Frozen Minute Maid orange concentrate, 1 can
• 4 oz Concentrated lemon juice
• 84 oz White Sugar

DIRECTIONS

• Bring to rolling boil and continue stirring for 12 minutes, add 2 packets of dry Pectin, continue boiling for another 3 minutes.
• Place in heated jars and seal.

Batch #1: 24th January 2008 - Made in two half batches. 6.5 lbs fruit 5.25lbs sugar total 11.75 lbs, produced 8.0 lbs marmalade. Set very well, nice bitter flavor but peel was hard but softened somewhat by 2009.

Batch #1: Feb 2009 Tried boiling whole fruit to pre-soften the peel but it got messy, next time will follow above recipe but pre-boil the Seville peel for 20 minutes.

Batch #3: 31st January 2010 Made 2 batches of 3lbs Seville (juicy for a change) = 8 oranges, peel scored into 8 segments and the pith removed, fine cut and boiled in a little water for 2 minutes and allowed to marinate overnight. Pulp cleared of excess pith and broken up by hand to remove pips. Produced 10.8 oz peel, 2.4 oz pips and 7 oz juice/pulp which was broken down in a Cuisinart. 20 oz. total reach batch. Added one whole tin of Minute Maid frozen orange juice concentrate and 30 oz. sugar. Boiled down until temperature reached 102 C. and color had become golden, skimmed foam and added 1 packet of Pectin. Potted into heated jars to produce 15 x ¼ litre jars from both batches. (about 1 orange plus concentrate per jar).

[Cheese Head]

Pictures first day part #2 . . .

[Cheese Head]

Pictures second day . . .

[MrsKK]

Yummmmm!

[mtncheesemaker]

Looks delicious! I love marmalade.

[DeejayDebi]

WOW what a guy! I'm impressed...  Is you Dad still married? 

[Cheese Head]

Debi, you are naughty , yes he is, to my mum, it's just that he does quite a bit of the cooking.

[SueVT]

Just made some myself... but I made the "Oxford" English style.  Used the "cooked oranges" method, which was pretty easy, all things considered. 

It's my latest blog post:  http://knowwhey.blogspot.com

--Sue

[Cheese Head]

Sue, that's a very different method, looks great! The batch my Dad made in years before must have been boiled longer as was darker like yours. Thanks for link, I've emailed it to him for ideas.

PS: I like how you didn't use manufactured Pectin, it was natural from the pips or the pulp?

[SueVT]

That's right, there is no pectin added to this.  The pectin is naturally-occurring, and I think it mostly is contained in the pith.  I read one guy's recipe in which he was saying it came from the pips (seeds), but I think this is incorrect.  The seeds are there to add to the slight bitter flavor...  By the time that the oranges are fully poached and then finished, the pectin has dissolved into the mixture.

I did a LOT of research, because I am a real marmalade-lover!!!
The gold standard for me was always Chivers Olde English.   But over the years, they too started adulterating the stuff with sugar syrup, glucose syrup, caramel colour (saddest of all!) and pectin.

So I'm glad I learned how to do this!

[DeejayDebi]

Debi, you are naughty , yes he is, to my mum, it's just that he does quite a bit of the cooking.

Just teasing!  Your Mum is a lucky gal!

[MrsKK]

So, for those of us in small Midwestern towns that don't carry such wonderful things as Seville oranges, can marmalade be made adequately with other varieties?

[DeejayDebi]

Yes Karen it can. When we get lucky we can use naval oranges. About any sweet orange will work though. A thick rinded one works best. So don't try those Clementines they don't work well. I am not even sure if those are really oranges. I have never seen a seville up here either. Always though a blood red would be nice to use but I haven't been able to find those up here either. 

[Cheese Head]

Jenna, welcome to the forum!

You are welcome, Sue has some good ideas on her blog also.

[windowater]

Make it every year with Seville oranges.  Never used commercial pectin but always dump in most of a mickey of cheap Scotch near the end of the cooking.  Yeah, makes it a little runny but hey....what a difference in taste!

W.