A recipe for traditional marmalade

Last weekend I made marmalade using my granny’s recipe. My mum remembers helping her - picking out the orange pips, cutting up the skins, and watching her stir the mixture in a big brass preserving pan.

The recipe follows the “whole fruit method”. This means you cook the oranges whole, slice up the rind, and then boil it up with sugar to make the classic preserve.

It is the quickest way to make traditional marmalade. It will take you about four hours from start to finish and most of that time is spent waiting for the oranges to either cook or cool.

Seville oranges cooked and ready to be sliced

Traditional marmalade (makes about four jars)

500g Seville oranges (about four)

1 lemon, juiced

1 kg granulated sugar or cane sugar

1 litre water

Scrub the oranges and remove the buttons at the top. Put them in a pan, add 1 litre of water, bring to the boil and simmer gently for about two hours until you can easily pierce the skin with a fork. Leave to cool.

Take the oranges out of the pan and keep the cooking liquid, you should have 800ml (add some water if you don’t have enough). Cut the oranges in half and flick out the pips with a fork. Discard the pips. Cut the orange halves into bits, thick or thin depending on how you like your marmalade.

Put four clean jam jars on a tray and put them in the oven at 100C. Put a saucer in the freezer – you’ll need it later to test whether your marmalade has set.

Put the orange bits and the cooking liquid into a pan. Add the lemon juice and the sugar. Stir over a medium heat until the sugar dissolves.

Bring to the boil and boil hard until setting point is reached. To test for this, take the saucer out of the freezer and put a blob of the mixture on it. Return the saucer to the freezer for two minutes. Take it out and push your finger through the blob. If the blob wrinkles your marmalade has set.

Take the pan off the heat and leave to cool for 10 minutes. Then take the jam jars out of the oven, pour the marmalade into each one, and put the lids on (I use these cellophane lids). Done!