Marmalade

A week or so ago, I bought a few loose Clementines from Intermarché. At least I thought they were Clementines, and so did the girl on the check-out, but they actually weren’t. Either by accident or design, and I have my suspicions, someone had put what looked like Clementines in the Clementine section without changing the label.

In fact they were so alike, that they could easily be mistaken for them, even on quite close examination. But actually they were marmalade oranges, as I found out to my cost when I began to peel one, noticed that it was much lighter in colour than the Clementines I’d bought up to then, and tasted the fruit. It nearly took the top of my head off, it was so bitter!

I was tempted just to throw them away, but I didn’t because deep down I had a hankering to use them to make some marmalade and having downloaded a recipe from the internet, I added a kilo of preserving sugar to my shopping list a couple of days ago, together with a few more oranges. Unfortunately, when I got home, I found that I’d disposed of all of the jars that I’d diligently saved over several months last year to use for damson jam, and that left me with a bit of a dilemma as I had all of the ingredients for marmalade, but no jars to put it in!

I ended up buying half a dozen preserving jars that cost me considerably more than if I’d just bought several jars of marmalade off-the-shelf, but as I saw it, that wasn’t the point. Anyway, to heck with it! And yesterday evening, I put the recipe to the test, with the result shown in the following picture.

null

The marmalade that came out tastes FANTASTIC! I’m not saying that it’s the best I’ve ever tasted, but it’s lovely and thick with thick-cut peel, the way I like it, and must be very close to it.

I’ve just checked the label on a jar of marmalade that I bought in the UK, as follows:
– Glucose-fructose syrup
– Orange
– Sugar
– Acid (citric acid)
– Colour (plain caramel)
– Gelling agent (pectins)
– Acidity regulator (sodium citrates)
– Caramelised sugar

If I’d labelled mine and listed the ingredients, they’d show sugar, oranges and a dash of lemon juice. Oh yes, and a little bit of time and elbow grease. I know which I prefer 😉