Seville orange marmalade - a new annual event for us

I’m spending the afternoon making marmalade. I find making preserves takes my mind off life’s shit. It’s all the attention to fine chopping - making sure it’s fruit that’s cut, not fingers. This is only the second time I’ve made marmalade but last year’s efforts were so successful that I doubt whether commercial products will ever cut it for me again.

I’m sure the Sevilles are early this year and that it was well into February when I made it last year. In fact, I’m sure that’s the case - I used this recipe from my newspaper and it was only in the 12/2 edition - https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/12/marmalade-recipe-seville-oranges-felicity-cloake

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I have a kumquat tree that is in desperate need of picking before all the fruit goes bad. I think I’ll follow your kitchen therapy lead and get a small batch of jam made. I won’t have enough fruit to can multiple jars. Last year I made one small jar with some minced jalapeño added and it was the star.

I hope you find some distraction in the kitchen.

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I know this Mamade mix doesn’t provide the same therapeutic effect as making it yourself, but I remember seeing it in the Vermont Country Store catalog as a kid and thinking that it seemed so exotic. Have you tried this? Is it any good? Thanks.

https://www.vermontcountrystore.com/mamade-orange-marmalade-mix-2-cans/product/H4382

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I never knew this was available! I’d be interested in hearing from someone who used it to make marmalade. I’ve never seen Seville oranges available anywhere I’ve lived so this could be a game changer.

No - both times I’ve made it, I’ve used fresh oranges. And I’ve just finished the boiling of it all - and, without wishing to put too fine a point on it, it tastes effing fabulous!

I imagine the tinned oranges should work fine - Robertsons are the first producers of Seville orange marmalade. The story goes that back in 1860, Robertson was a grocer and bought a consignment of oranges for his shop in Paisley. They were, of course, far too bitter to be eaten as fruit so he decided to make a “jam” with them, so as not to waste the product.

By 1891, he’d opened a factory in Droylsden in northwest England - literally ten minutes drive from me - and this became his major production facility until it closed in 2010. Apparently the word marmalade originates from the Portguese word for a quince jam but we Britons only use the word for a citrus fruit “jam”.

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Your home must be filled with a wonderful scent! There is a lot of satisfaction in seeing the sparking jewel tones of home canned preserves.

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Thanks - I love learning the stories about how things came to be. So glad your batch is a delicious success!

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Do Seville :tangerine: oranges have an American equivalent? Hmmm.

Some thoughts on this old Chowhound thread:

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I have a really good recipe for marmalade that I got from my barber…

Sevilles are their own thing, but there are a small number of American growers of them.

There’s a fascinating piece by the American food writer John Thorne about marmalade-making as a traditionally male thing (it’s in the collection Mouth Wide Open, but here it is in a PDF from his original newsletter):

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Good article, ratty. Thanks for the link.

As indicated there, you can get that sweet/sharp flavour without Sevilles, by making marmalade from the sharp citrus fruits - lemon, lime , grapefruit. There used to be a guy who sold preserves at my local farmers market. He was retired and did this as a hobby (although one that brought in a bit of cash). He used to make a lovely “three fruit” marmalade using those fruits.

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Do Seville :tangerine: oranges have an American equivalent?

Not that I’ve ever heard of or seen. Every once in a while I see imported Sevilles, and you can get “generic” sour oranges here aka “naranjas agrias” (in some places, in season), but they rarely have the thick rind that’s key to making good marmalade.

I dare say sour oranges (if not necessarily the same varieties sold as “Sevilles”) would grow in the limited areas of the US where oranges can be grown at all (and to generalize, or probably overgeneralize, the sour varieties tend to be cold-hardier than sweet oranges), but I assume they’ve never been as profitable a crop as sweet oranges, so aren’t in fact grown here in commercial quantities. I don’t know where the ones sold elsewhere in the US come from, but the ones we get on the East Coast are almost always from the Caribbean (mostly the Dominican Republic in recent years), where they’re used more for their juice than the rind, which is no thicker than the rind of typical “juice oranges”. Fwiw, it does have a distinctive aroma that I like better than regular orange rind - it’s a little more complex and less “monolithic” orange…

ETA: Having looked through the Chowhound thread, apparently Seville types are available out West, or seemingly so, but it doesn’t look like they’re grown on a large scale, nor distributed very widely… and never having seen them myself, I’m not in a position to say whether they have the typical thick rind of the “original” Sevilles (similar to navel oranges, as someone else in that thread confused them with), or the thinner rind of juice oranges.

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Thanks!
:slight_smile:

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A local produce market here has Seville oranges but I have no idea where they get them from.