Book of Days Tales

Today is the birthday (1852) of Alice Pleasance Liddell who inspired Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) to write Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alice was the fourth child of Henry Liddell, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and his wife Lorina Hanna Liddell (née Reeve). On the 4^th of July 1862, in a rowing trip on the Isis from Folly Bridge in Oxford to Godstow for a picnic outing, 10-year-old Alice asked Charles Dodgson to entertain her and her sisters, Edith (aged 8) and Lorina (13), with a story. As (Rev) Robinson Duckworth rowed the boat, Dodgson regaled the girls with fantastic stories of a girl, named Alice, and her adventures after she fell into a rabbit-hole. The story was similar to those Dodgson had spun for the sisters before, but this time Liddell asked Mr. Dodgson to write it down for her. He promised to do so but did not get around to the task for some months. He eventually presented her with the manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground in November 1864.

According to her grandson, Lorina Liddell (Alice’s mother), gave the recipe for orange marmalade to Frank Cooper’s wife who then produced Cooper’s Oxford marmalade. I can’t say whether this is true or not, but it’s as good an excuse as any to dribble on about marmalade for a while. In Alice’s time, the word “marmalade” was not restricted to preserves made with citrus fruits, just as cognates in Romance languages (marmellata in Italian or  marmelada in Spanish) refer to jams in general (and the folk tale that claims that marmalade is a corruption of the French “Marie est malade” [where “Marie” is Mary Queen of Scots] is complete nonsense). The word in English eventually became restricted to preserves of bitter oranges when used on their  own, and more generally to other citrus fruits such as lime or grapefruit. For many years I made huge batches of marmalades in January after Christmas was over and before I had to return to lecturing in February. I experimented with lemons, limes, kumquats, and grapefruit year by year, but they often failed to set properly because those fruits do not have as much natural pectin in them as Seville oranges. Seville oranges are very hard to find in the US, but there really is no substitute for proper orange marmalade. Regular oranges will not do. The peel must be bitter and laden with the right aromatics. Here’s Mrs Beeton’s discourse followed by one of several different recipes.

1502. Marmalades, jams, and fruit pastes are of the same nature, and are now in very general request. They are prepared without difficulty, by attending to a very few directions; they are somewhat expensive, but may be kept without spoiling for a considerable time. Marmalades and jams differ little from each other: they are preserves of a half-liquid consistency, made by boiling the pulp of fruits, and sometimes part of the rinds, with sugar. The appellation of marmalade is applied to those confitures which are composed of the firmer fruits, as pineapples or the rinds of oranges; whereas jams are made of the more juicy berries, such as strawberries, raspberries, currants, mulberries, &c. Fruit pastes are a kind of marmalades, consisting of the pulp of fruits, first evaporated to a proper consistency, and afterwards boiled with sugar. The mixture is then poured into a mould, or spread on sheets of tin, and subsequently dried in the oven or stove till it has acquired the state of a paste. From a sheet of this paste, strips may be cut and formed into any shape that may be desired, as knots, rings, &c. Jams require the same care and attention in the boiling as marmalade; the slightest degree of burning communicates a disagreeable empyreumatic taste, and if they are not boiled sufficiently, they will not keep. That they may keep, it is necessary not to be sparing of sugar.

ORANGE MARMALADE.

1566. INGREDIENTS.—Equal weight of fine loaf sugar and Seville oranges; to 12 oranges allow 1 pint of water.

Mode.—Let there be an equal weight of loaf sugar and Seville oranges, and allow the above proportion of water to every dozen oranges. Peel them carefully, remove a little of the white pith, and boil the rinds in water 2 hours, changing the water three times to take off a little of the bitter taste. Break the pulp into small pieces, take out all the pips, and cut the boiled rind into chips. Make a syrup with the sugar and water; boil this well, skim it, and, when clear, put in the pulp and chips. Boil all together from 20 minutes to 1/2 hour; pour it into pots, and, when cold, cover down with bladders or tissue-paper brushed over on both sides with the white of an egg. The juice and grated rind of 2 lemons to every dozen of oranges, added with the pulp and chips to the syrup, are a very great improvement to this marmalade.

Time.—2 hours to boil the orange-rinds; 10 minutes to boil the syrup; 20 minutes to 1/2 hour to boil the marmalade.

Average cost, from 6d. to 8d. per lb. pot.

Seasonable.—This should be made in March or April, as Seville oranges are then in perfection.

Decades ago I began with this recipe as a guide, but then played with it over the years. First I boiled the fruit very slowly for a very long time over low heat.  I used to fill a big stock pot with oranges (or other citrus fruit), cover them with water, and set the pot, covered, on my wood stove overnight. The water barely simmered, but in the morning the fruit was completely cooked. I then took the fruit out, weighed it, chopped up the peel into thin slices, and returned them to the cooking water while discarding the seeds. I added as much in weight of sugar as the weight of oranges, and brought the mix to a boil on the stove on high heat. At first you need to stir occasionally with a wooden spoon to make sure the sugar dissolves, but as the marmalade thickens you must stir more often to avoid scalding or burning. Determining when you have achieved the right temperature and consistency for the marmalade to set you must take a very little in a teaspoon and drop it on a cool, clean saucer. If it flows at all, it is not ready. If it forms a concave droplet, or “bead,” it is ready. I used to use small canning jars, place the marmalade in them hot from the stove almost to the brim, and cap them. They formed a hermetic seal and would keep like that, unrefrigerated, for a year or more. With some fruits lacking in adequate pectin, such as kumquat or lime, I added a little extra pectin to be sure. Be careful, though; too much pectin makes it set well enough, but the product can have a weak flavor.