Mmmmm Marmalade

Lovely handmade marmalade—batch 1 of 3. Phew...

As I write this my kitchen is full to billowing with the most delightful steam, delightful because—for the second day in a row—I’m making a giant batch of marmalade. My expert mother-in-law, Nancy Harmon Jenkins, wrote about the whole process and finesse of making bitter orange marmalade on her excellent blog, link here. But I did a little poking around of my own today, learning a bit of history about the bitter oranges of the Middle Ages and the ‘Conserve of Oranges’ offered in the 1587 Book of Cookrye and another recipe found in a cook book titled The Whole Duty of a Woman (1737). Marmalade as devotion and duty—that’s definitely the version I’m going to try next year.