glowing marmalades

Bob has just made his fourth batch of marmalade this month, using Seville oranges which are only available in January. Batch 1 had to be thrown away when he got engrossed in some editing work and left the boiling marmalade to caramelise. Batch 2 was an unusual recipe with dark muscovado sugar, not a marmalade for all seasons. Batch 3 was a laborious ‘fine peel’ marmalade which involved hours of paring the pith carefully away from the rind of kilos of oranges, and then cutting the rinds into vermicelli with the point of our sharpest knife. The resulting marmalade was pronounced ‘boring’. Batch 4, his masterpiece and probably the final batch of this year, reverts to a ‘traditional’ recipe of white sugar, more of the pith, and chunkier peel. I shall be sad when the kitchen stops being an aromatic laboratory of preserves.