Food
Bee Wilson makes perfect marmalade
Published 27 January 2003
Unrefined sugar and good timing are the keys to successful marmalade
The only reason for watching Gangs of New York, the overblown new film from Martin Scorsese, is Daniel Day-Lewis, whose performance as the vicious nativist William Cutting includes some truly awesome butchery, mainly on pigs. The character, a Yankee gang leader, uses hanging carcasses to show his proteges the fastest way to kill a man. His knifework is something to behold. What makes Day-Lewis's act so mesmerising is the way he combines bloodthirsty fury with meticulous craftsmanship.
Daniel is not the only member of his family to take food seriously. His sister Tamasin has a rather quieter but no less demanding approach in the kitchen, judging from her fine new book, Good Tempered Food: recipes to love, leave and linger over (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25). This is full of recipes to "tarry over", such as cod with slow-baked Greek potatoes; guinea fowl with puy lentils; crab apple jelly. She is as exacting about her ingredients as her brother is about his Method. For example, she observes that when making Seville orange marmalade one must only ever use unrefined sugar, because "refined sugar seems to leave a toxic froth on the surface".
I can confirm that this is true, after spending several days engaged in obsessive marmalade-making. Unrefined sugar is essential and brown sugar even better. Having consulted about 15 books on the subject and tested four different recipes, I would say the other crucial things are: to boil the oranges for long enough so that the skin is really soft, and preferably to soak them first; but never ever to overcook the mixture of oranges and sugar - the minute that a teaspoonful on a cold saucer even faintly crinkles when you push it with your finger, the pan must be taken off the heat. These are the two best versions I tried, in case you share this annual British passion. They are easier than the Day-Lewis formula, which, though excellent, involves too much measuring and muslin for comfort.
Brown sugar marmalade
A very soft, pithy, chunky dark jam in the traditional style, this could not be simpler to make, nor more delicious on breakfast toast. For each kilo of Seville oranges, you need 1kg light muscovado sugar, 400g unrefined granulated sugar and half a lemon.
Put the oranges in a large pan, cover copiously with water, bring to the boil and simmer for two hours. Leave to cool completely. Transfer the oranges to a board, cut them open and remove the pips. Then cut the peel and flesh to your liking and put in a clean pan. This is a slimy business, but the only troublesome bit of the whole procedure. Next, add the sugar to the pan, along with five or six ladlefuls of the liquid the oranges cooked in (more if you prefer more jelly) and the juice of half a lemon (which helps setting). Bring to the boil and simmer until setting point is reached. Cool a bit before you transfer the preserve to clean jars.
Sour orange marmalade
This is more of a citrussy preserve in the Middle Eastern tradition than a true marmalade. It is adapted from the excellent Cranks Bible (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £14.99), whose author, Nadine Abensur, recalls the childhood marmalade she used to eat on warmed matzah at Passover. It contains no pith and the sugar is boiled along with the peel, giving it a bitter and toffee-ish quality. For each kilo of Seville oranges, you need 1.4kg unrefined granulated sugar and 1 lemon.
First, peel the oranges very thinly, as if they were apples, with a swivel peeler. Cover this peel with boiling water and set aside. Then, peel away all the pith with your hands and put the pith in a small pan along with the pips, which you need to extract from the flesh. Cover the pips and pith with water and simmer for 15 minutes, then strain and save the resulting pectin-rich liquid. Chop the orange flesh and place in a large preserving pan along with the orange peel, which you have sliced very thinly. Add the sugar and the juice of the lemon and five ladlefuls or so of the pith-water. Bring to the boil and simmer for between an hour and an hour and a half, or until it passes the wrinkle test. Cool a bit before you pot it.
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