Monday 1 October 2012

Cooking other people's gluts: lemon marmalade

My lemon tree has all but stopped  providing fruit. It is a very productive tree, I have had constant lemons all year. But right now my lemon is happily producing its next crop. Thankfully lemons are really cheap at the moment, so its a good time to use other people's gluts. So yesterday I made lemon marmalade.


I had never made marmalade before, but have made lots of jam in my time. I took a recipe in the Commonsense cookery book  - Book 1 ( pg 235) as my starting point. This number is a staple (oops - I guess that's a pun?) of Homescience teaching at High Schools in NSW (or at least it was the hundred-million years ago that I was in High School). Here is the recipe and below shows the way I wrangled with it.

Marmalade
1 kg fruit (I used 1.2 kgs)
1 kg sugar (I used 700 gms)
2 litres water
(I added the juice and zested rind of an additional 2 lemons)

The recipe calls you to "wash and slice the fruit thinly, remove the seeds, centre pith and thick ends". I did exactly as it said for two of the lemons and then I changed the way I wanted to approach it.  I did wash and remove seeds and pith but I decided  that instead of relatively thick knife-cut rind, I would prefer thin rind so got to on the rest of the fruit with the zester.

The recipe calls you to "place in a container cover with water  until rind is soft and let stand overnight". But I figured that seeing as my rind was so finely zested that the rind didn't need softening (and I am an impatient sort of person...) so I got cooking.

Then it says to "boil fruit and water covered until rind is soft - about 1 hour". I tossed everything in at once, sugar and all and added the juice and rind of 2 more lemons. I used only 700 gms sugar, in part because from experience the Commonsense cookery book has quite a sweet tooth. However I also thought that if I took the sugar down too far then it might be too bitter.

I guess I cooked it for about an hour?  Not sure, but it reduced quite a lot and turned a lovely golden yellow/orange colour. I kept testing it to see if it had set by placing a small amount on a cold plate and pushing it around when cool to see if it wrinkled, but it wasn't really wrinkling. But I felt like it might have been set enough and so put it into hot jars. It made 3 jars and a ramekin. The ramekin made it easy to check if it had set.

To be honest I was quite conflicted - would it set? It didn't react to the wrinkle test like jam does? But then again, knowing that citrus has high pectin levels, I thought it probably would.  I left it on the bench to cool overnight. In the morning I took a look at it, it certainly had set! Yay for instinct.

It's such a lovely colour, the balance of bitter to sweet is quite good, although still a little too sweet for me. Next time I will take the sugar down further.


So in the last week or so I have  made strawberry jam and now this lemon marmalade. I have more than enough home-made jam for our household but I could be persuaded to make some plum jam when other people's gluts mean that plums are plentiful.

11 comments:

  1. Very nice, and yet another good use for lemons! Must keep that one in mind...

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    1. I had it on some heavy bread toast this morning, yum.

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  2. Our text of the day was Cookery the Australian Way and I too still refer to it - really good for basic recipes. CTAW Lemon Marmalade is 2kg lemons, 4 cups water, 4 cups sugar and as my mother currently has a lemon glut its probably time I gave it a go.

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    1. Aren't the titles too funny? Thanks for the CTAW recipe.

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    2. Yes! I had that book for my Home Ec book, too! Alas, I suspect that after high school I decided that cooking was for silly people who couldn't buy pre-made stuff from the supermarket and got rid of it. Oops?

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  3. I'm thinking of making some lemon butter as I have lemons and eggs! Have you made it? I've not tried before. I might give your marmalade a go, too. I'm not one for sweet things much but I do like the tang of lemons and limes.

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    1. Oh boy, have I made lemon butter. Great way to use up eggs. Really delicious.

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  4. I have never made a lemon marmalade, but I love it. Thanks for inspiration, lemons are very affordable this time of the year, I shell try to make my own marmalade then too :)

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    1. It's really lovely, I had it on toast this morning.

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  5. That looks lovely - the colour is wonderful and the texture looks perfect. I made orange marmalade earlier in the year by pressure cooking the whole oranges to soften the rind. It worked really well, and the texture of slicing the rind was amazing - just the coolest thing to slice. Problem is, I didn't like the slices of rind in the finished product! Now I have jars and jars of the stuff to get through - maybe I should sieve it.

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    1. Oh I like the pressure cooked version - good idea. I don't mind the peel as long as it's thin. But people like marmalade in all sorts of different ways.

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