The Cottage Smallholder

Photo: Seville Orange and Quince Marmalade

After discovering that Seville orange marmalade wiped quince marmalade off the map I was intrigued. I love the taste of quince jelly and quince marmalade might be good. I had 700g of quince pulp left over from making jelly. Rather than make Membrillo I thought I’d experiment with combining Seville oranges and quinces in a rich marmalade. As there was no recipe to tell me how to do this I had to invent my own. Quinces are harvested in September and Seville oranges appear in the shops in January in the UK. But with the help of a freezer you too can make this remarkable marmalade.

Last year I adapted the Delia recipe that we follow, removing 700g of oranges and replacing them with the same weight of sieved pulp. The result was excellent – a rich marmalade. Chunky Seville hand cut orange slices hanging in a delicious quincey orangey base. Unbelievably fruity, sultry and good.

We’ve guzzled this marmalade all year and agreed that it could do with more orange slices. So yesterday I followed the instructions for Delia’s Dark Chunky Marmalade  – by poaching the oranges they are so much easier to cut and prepare. Then I put 700g of quince pulp through the food mill and added this and an extra 1.4 kilos of sugar at the ‘add sugar stage’ of the marmalade. The ratio of sugar to oranges in Delia’s recipe is 2 to 1 – no wonder marmalade is so waist challenging.

I added the extra sugar incrementally until the marmalade had a similar sweetness to last year’s batch.  We don’t like marmalade to be too sweet. But you could add more sugar to taste. Just remember to stir it well to dissolve the sugar before you bring the pot to the boil for the long simmering stage.

If you do use Delia’s recipe for Dark Chunky Marmalade there is one point that is not very clear in the recipe. All the poaching liquid is used in the recipe not just the 570ml in the pectin saucepan. I also discovered if you tie the muslin loosely you can put two wooden spoons – diametrically opposed and twist them against each other to easily squeeze the muslin firmly without tears.

More marmalade recipes to follow. Watch this space.