Originally posted by Dave2002
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Grapefruit and Campari is a happy combination
And the tune ends too soon for us all -
We got our Sevilles last week. (They freeze really well if you can't be a***d to make marmalade right now.) Qusetion: Do the denizens of Seville make/eat marmalade, or do they grow their oranges just for the Brits? I've not come across marmalade in France or Spain. (And will we still be able to get them after March 29?
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... it's a British thing. The (bitter) seville orange marmalade, that is. Tho' our continental cousins have an (execrable) orange 'marmalade' (scil. jam) made from sweet oranges. And, as every schoolboy (and schoolgirl) kno, the etymology of 'marmalade' is from the Portuguese for quince...
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Good word that, execrable. Thoroughly agree!Originally posted by vinteuil View Post.
... it's a British thing. The (bitter) seville orange marmalade, that is. Tho' our continental cousins have an (execrable) orange 'marmalade' (scil. jam) made from sweet oranges. And, as every schoolboy (and schoolgirl) kno, the etymology of 'marmalade' is from the Portuguese for quince...
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Marmalade making was a big thing in my family when I was a child. The pressure cooker was used to do the first brief cook of the whole fruit which was then cut up and the pips separated out to be put in a muslin bag for the pectin(fished out before jarring). For some reason pip-fishing always seemed to be my job so it was always my fault, according to my father, if he found one in the end product. My mother experimented with other citrus(especially if there were a lot in the bargain bag of reject fruit we used to get in the weekly Coop delivery), but usually only as a way to bulk out the Seville oranges. Grapefruit was reasonably successful in moderation but the thick skins needed more attention from the knife as otherwise they had a tendency to make hard lumps that wouldn't spread on bread properly and could make for cloudiness; lemon worked better. Small citrus tended to disintegrate in the rough and tumble of cooking the Sevilles and make for a less translucent product, but the taste and smell was often good; I don't know if that would hold good today - now that such things are available most of the year they don't seem to have the same intense fragrance and taste much of the time.
If the store cupboard started to run low before the next Seville season came round the MaMade tins came into play. I have had marmalade made from this in recent years and it is still good.
We used to get through a lot of marmalade with a family of 5 having breakfast each day but it was also used in baking cakes and sponge puddings. The addition of marmalade to seed cake made something to be looked forward to - moist and fragrant - rather than something to be refused if at all possible.Comment
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The question that fascinates me is: which came first the bitter orange or the marmalade? Was marmalade invented as something to use up those late and bitter oranges, or were oranges deliberately bred to ripen late in order to produce marmalade? There is very little else that can be done with them, I believe, apart from salt and preserve them, which I have never thought worth the effort. Commercial marmalade is expensively available in shops here, usually "Dundee", but since I learned to make it myself (ignoring the protests of Mme M), and since the oranges themselves are hard to find, helpful contacts bring them for me from England. (I wonder if that breaks some customs rule about conveying unlicenced* fresh fruit, and further, will that change after you-know-what?). Would anybody care to say whether they think the large coarse ones are better or worse for taste than the smaller smoother ones.Originally posted by ardcarp View Post
* or unlicensed?Last edited by Alain Maréchal; 13-01-19, 15:23.Comment
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The fruit came first and different cultures found different uses for it. You certainly have a circuitous supply chain - Spain to UK to France! I doubt it infringes any regulations since most fruit and veg seem to be low control items - unlike meat and other animal products, and some plants. Interestingly the prepared product linked in an earlier post says it can't be shipped to non-EU countries - for what reason I wonder since the canning process must render it low/zero risk for disease I would have thought.Originally posted by Alain Maréchal View PostComment
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...and I think that oranges came to Spain from China originally.Comment
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I received some Buck's Fizz marmalade in my stocking for Christmas.Comment
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Blimey, I'm sure I saw a tv programme when I was a kid that said that Marco Polo brought it back from China. Presented by Alan Whicker, IIRC.Originally posted by vinteuil View PostComment
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