does lemon marmalade darken this much?

[zoe b]

I had an extra bag of lemons from Costco to deal with (left over from Limoncello).

Decided to make marmalade--all the lemon marmalade recipes seem to be for Meyer lemons. My Ball Preserving cookbook only had a pectin marmalade recipe, so i decided to wing it from Joy of Cooking.

The recipe said measure fruit, add 3 cups water for each cup of fruit. Let sit for 12 hours, simmer for 20 minutes, let sit for 12 hours. Add 3/4 cup sugar for each cup --I ended up with a huge stock pot full of the mixture.

Joy said to cook in small batches, so I boiled about a 3/4 full dutch oven--probably too slow a boil because I was doing three other things--making cookies, decorating the tree, getting last orders out.

It took a long time to reach gel, (slow boil) but also darkened considerably--is this normal?

I ended up with 9 jars--now this was only 1/3 of the amount I have--I'll make one more batch, & then freeze what's left over--I think this was only 9 lemons--but big ones.

[Blether]

I deliberately use a brown sugar because I like the flavour and the tawny colour. What sugar did you use ? Can you confirm, for the first soak/boil/soak, that you mean fruit that's already cut ? It seems a very long soak time, and lemons left lying around do brown, don't they ? My marmalade-making works like this:

Break the fruit down - first juice it, then separate everything that's left into (1) the seeds, fruit pulp and all the pith and (2) the outer part of the peel (the rind), with the pith trimmed, cut in shreds.

Boil all together, in added water, (the parts in (1) above in a muslin bag), till the rind shreds are soft (about 2 hours).

Remove the bag of pulp &c (squeezing the liquid from it), add the sugar and boil to a set.

This whole process is much faster (in terms of elapsed time) than the one you describe.

[Lisa Shock]

Was it a cast iron dutch oven?

[zoe b]

I deliberately use a brown sugar because I like the flavour and the tawny colour. What sugar did you use ?

I used white sugar.

Can you confirm, for the first soak/boil/soak, that you mean fruit that's already cut ? It seems a very long soak time, and lemons left lying around do brown, don't they ?

Yes, the lemons were halved & then sliced very thin. They didn't discolor in this part of the process

My marmalade-making works like this:

Break the fruit down - first juice it, then separate everything that's left into (1) the seeds, fruit pulp and all the pith and (2) the outer part of the peel (the rind), with the pith trimmed, cut in shreds.

Boil all together, in added water, (the parts in (1) above in a muslin bag), till the rind shreds are soft (about 2 hours).

Remove the bag of pulp &c (squeezing the liquid from it), add the sugar and boil to a set.

This whole process is much faster (in terms of elapsed time) than the one you describe.

I'm guessing that you're British? because this sounds like the process I found when I went to British food sites. It sounded like a bit more work so I did the Joy of Cooking method.

But actually, boiling more of the water off before adding the sugar, as in your method, makes sense. I can see that this would make the final step much faster & perhaps keep the marmalade lighter.

It does taste just fine, though. I do like your idea of using brown sugar--I think I'll try it the next time I make this (probably in 10 years, as i think I'll have around 25 jars)

Was it a cast iron dutch oven?

no, good question, but it was stainless steel.

. Z

Edited December 20, 2009 by zoe b (log)

[Katie Meadow]

I've never made lemon marmalade, but I make orange marmalade every year. Any attempt to caramelize the sugar and get a smokier, darker more caramel flavor has resulted in a thicker, more solid end result. I haven't yet figured out how to get a delicate loose texture and a caramel taste.

You produced a lot of marmalade from those nine lemons, and it sounds like the volume you ended up with is the result of using all the lemon--pith, peel and pulp. I use only some pulp in the bag with the pips, and I don't use any pith at all. I juice the fruit, add water, and boil it with the bag of pips for about 20 minutes. Then I add fine-cut peel without any pith, and boil it another 25 minutes. For thick-cut marmalade, I guess the peel should be boiled the full amount of time. Then I measure the total liquid in the pot, and add 3/4 c sugar per cup of juice. I also squeeze out the pip bag into the mix. Then the liquid gets boiled again, until it reaches 213 degrees. If I take it any higher, it gets thicker than I like it. This doesn't take more than 45 min or an hour, I think, but I just go by temp. The recipes mine is based on don't call for macerating the fruit before boiling, so start to finish--my husband and I working together--it's more like two plus hours.

I start with 3 c of orange juice per batch, often adding the juice of one lemon and the juice of one bergamot to the 3c orange juice. My formula is 2.5 c total juice to 6 c water. I usually get approx 5 half-pints of marmalade from this amount, plus some extra. I've always followed the advice to make small batches. The longer you cook it, the less volume you will get, of course.

Once I tried to increase the caramel flavor by melting one cup of the sugar, caramelizing it, and then adding the boiled juice and the rest of the sugar. The result was good flavor and dark color, but a marmalade that was too set-up. Perhaps I should have tried taking it to a slightly lower temp that 213. I don't know if that would have made the difference. Perhaps the caramelizing of the sugar affects the set-up somehow.

Edited to add: I use an old Creuset cast iron w/enamel pot.

Edited December 20, 2009 by Katie Meadow (log)

[David A. Goldfarb]

I haven't tried this myself, but there's a series of videos with June Taylor on chow.com (now with an annoying advertisement up front that used not to be there), where, if I recall correctly, she says that keeping bright colors is a matter of stopping the process before it caramelizes--

http://www.chow.com/videos/show/obsessives#/show/obsessives/10695/obsessives-jam-packed

but to get it to set up properly at that point, I'd assume there's also a question of having the right amount of pectin.

Edited December 20, 2009 by David A. Goldfarb (log)

[zoe b]

You produced a lot of marmalade from those nine lemons, and it sounds like the volume you ended up with is the result of using all the lemon--pith, peel and pulp.

yeah, I DID use the whole lemon--I kind of like the slight bitterness from the pith, and i wanted all of the texture of the fruit in the marmalade.

I also didn't feel like doing all the prep involved in taking the fruit apart, but it may have been a false saving of time...

I think, as everyone has mentioned, that the darker color is a result of the mixture being slightly caramelized--which my cooking at a lower temp for a longer period produced.

I love caramel, so that is always welcome, and i like the bitterness from the pith, but i'd like a little more fresh lemon flavor--perhaps impossible to get all three flavors at once.

David said

I haven't tried this myself, but there's a series of videos with June Taylor on chow.com (now with an annoying advertisement up front that used not to be there), where, if I recall correctly, she says that keeping bright colors is a matter of stopping the process before it caramelizes--

http://www.chow.com/...ives-jam-packed

will check this out--thanks!

[Blether]

... I'm guessing that you're British? because this sounds like the process I found when I went to British food sites. It sounded like a bit more work so I did the Joy of Cooking method...

In fact I'm both British and Scottish. The method is a combination of Delia Smith's, with a recipe (in Japanese) from the web.

I checked Marguerite Patten's 'Basic Basics' book on jams & preserving just now - her method sounds like yours, except that she separates the lemon juice at the very beginning, and only adds it back together with the sugar.

Katie, I've found jam-making in Le Creuset difficult because of the 'heat over-run' after you reach temperature and turn off the gas.

[Katie Meadow]

Zoe, I always felt I could get enough bitterness from the peel and from regulating the amount of sugar, without needing the pith. Marmalade is definitely a matter of very personal taste, but I find the pith adds something I don't want in the flavor and a gumminess or sometimes a cloudiness to the final product. But I do like a fairly delicate, clear thin-cut marmalade.

Blether, perhaps I compensate by taking the temp only up to 213 before canning. Some recipes I read suggested testing for set-up by dropping the hot liquid on a freezing cold plate, and seeing how fast it drips, and the implication was that this might happen around 215 degrees. I found that was too hot, and I prefer my marmalade a little looser. Just going by temp actually seems a better gauge than the drip test, but we pretty much have our variables under control at this point. That said, and happy as I am every time I crack open a fresh jar, I would still like to figure out how to get a little more caramel taste without it being too set up.

Yesterday my husband returned from shopping to tell me that Sevilles are in, so I guess next week we will get into gear!