Orange Marmalade – Attempt Two

I made another attempt at Orange Marmalade. The trick is to get someone else to open the cookbook to the correct page so you are not distracted by suggestions of how to prepare and serve a calf’s head. Mrs. Beeton has several orange marmalade recipes but I chose this one:

I chose this recipe because of the line: “Let there be an equal weight of loaf sugar and Seville oranges.” It sounds so biblical.

I like these wrinkly Seville oranges. They don’t look perfect and they are pretty bitter, much like an interesting character in a book or movie. Anyway, through the mysterious magic of chopping, sweetening and simmering they were transformed into:

Marmalade!! This batch is way better than the batch we made last year and infinitely better than commercially prepared marmalade. It takes about three hours to make and is well worth the trouble. Just the smell of the simmering oranges is enough to make it worth the trouble.

 

Orange Marmalade

The Seville oranges are in the store so I bought some to make Orange Marmalade. I consulted one of my favourite books :

‘Beeton’s Cookery’ by Mrs Beeton herself. We used a recipe from this book last year and made delicious marmalade. This book is one of my favourite possessions. After Mrs Beeton’s death in 1861, several books based on her household management book were published. This dictionary of cookery is one of those books. I have spent hours with it. I love it’s old, smooth cover:

I love it’s matter-of-fact title. I love that it is over 140 years old.

I love the information in the book. Where else would I find out how to carve a plover, fry a cow heel and make cowslip wine? She includes Bills of Fare for dinners for 16, 12, 10, 8 and 6 persons. She provides menus for ‘plain family dinners’ . I have never tried these menus but I am very tempted. I would really like to draw your attention to page 104:

It seems that I have been doing this incorrectly as I have not been placing the box of chocolates on a glass plate. However, I have nailed the part about purchasing them at any time. As is usually the case when I pull out this book , I emerged, after two hours, much wiser but no closer to having the orange marmalade. I’ll try again later.

 

Old Cookbooks and Magazines

In a town near my house there is an antique market. Every few months I go there to have a look around and gasp when I see something I remember from my childhood. What is something from my childhood doing in an antique market? What is someone trying to say exactly? Yesterday I was poking around and I found these:

The Needlecraft magazine is from June 1928. Eighty years old this month. From a time before the Depression, WWII, antibiotics, computers etc., etc. That fascinates me. Inside I found some very interesting articles. For instance:

It seems closet organization was a problem then as well. A whole article is devoted to getting closets in order. Also, the magic of green tea was being discovered:

Here is a flapper admiring her latest kitchen appliance:

It seems that not much has changed. Well, maybe porcelain enamel oil-burning ranges are not as common as they used to be but just substitute a stainless steel stove and replace the flapper with a happy looking woman who doesn’t look like she has enjoyed a square meal in some time let alone cooked one and I think you would be on to something.

The Five Roses cookbook was printed in 1915 and is full of recipes for breads, cakes, muffins, parkins(what is a parkin?), tarts, rolls and much, much more. I’ll have to give the Rock Cakes a try simply because that is the most unlikely name for anything that is supposed to be edible. What do you serve with it – dishwater tea? I didn’t realize what a great find the book was until I was back home and looking through it. I found in the back, in ink so faded as to be almost unreadable, recipes from a previous owner:

That’s a recipe for Rhubarb dumplings and there are also recipes for salad dressing, potato doughnuts, ripe corn relish, a small layer cake and a large layer cake. I don’t know who the person was who wrote out these recipes or if she ever read Needlecraft magazine, but since she went to so much trouble I’ll be happy to give her recipes a try.