Scotland's jewelled bitter orange preserve: Seville oranges boiled with their peel and pips until the pectin sets, the bitterness transforms, and the amber jars glow on the winter shelf: the great annual ritual of the British kitchen
Origin: Scotland
From the journey of Orange.
Seville orange marmalade is one of the defining foods of British food culture; and one of the great paradoxes of the orange's culinary history. The Seville orange is too bitter to eat raw; its rind is thick and aromatic; its juice is sharp and complex. It is precisely this bitterness that makes it irreplaceable in marmalade: boiled with its rind and seeds (which contain enormous quantities of pectin), combined with sugar and water, it produces a preserve of dark amber, trembling, translucent intensity that no other citrus can match. The window for making marmalade from fresh Seville oranges is extraordinarily short; they are available from Spain only in January and February; and the annual making of marmalade is one of the great seasonal rituals of the British kitchen. The Keiller family of Dundee is credited with industrialising marmalade production in the early 19th century, and 'Dundee marmalade' became the defining British breakfast preserve. Frank Cooper's Oxford Marmalade (first produced 1874) and Wilkin & Sons of Tiptree are the other great British marmalade dynasties. The preserve travels with the British wherever they go: it is said that Paddington Bear's preference for marmalade sandwiches captures a truth about British identity that nothing else quite does.
The Seville orange season is so short that serious marmalade makers buy their entire year's supply in January and freeze the oranges whole for making batches throughout the year. Frozen Seville oranges make marmalade of identical quality to fresh. The word 'marmalade' predates orange marmalade: it originally referred to a quince preserve (from Portuguese marmelo, quince), and early English marmalades were made from quinces. The Portuguese introduced orange marmalade to England in the 16th century, and the word transferred to the orange preparation. The British annual ritual of Seville orange marmalade, always made in January when the Spanish oranges arrive in supermarkets, is one of the last great seasonal food traditions of the British Isles.
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