Rhubarb Marmalade

Continuing with my harvest of rhubarb, I tackled a new type of preserve

Rhubarb Orange Marmalade.  Yes, you heard me right.

The Challenge
Historical Food Fortnighly Challege 12. In A Jam...or Jelly, or Pickle (June 3 - June 16) In a world before refrigeration, preserving food was an important task. For this challenge, make your favorite preserved food - bonus points if it’s seasonal!

I have discovered how much I enjoy period jams and jellies made without pectin gelling agents.  They are so easy to make and so delicious!  Strawberries would be the logical seasonal fruit in early June in northern Illinois, but I still have a surplus of the last strawberry jam I made.  Since my rhubarb was still hardy, I thought I should take advantage of its abundance.  And, I have loved rhubarb since my childhood.

The Recipe

Rhubarb is not the normal stuff of jams and jellies, modern or period.  As I researched, I did start finding recipes for a combination that sounded unusual - rhubarb and orange.  In true Victorian fashion, I found the same recipe copied from one cookbook to another.

The Wives's Own Cookery Book (1856, London), by Frederick Bishop may be the originator of the recipe.  One American instance is in The Family, Farm, and Garden and the Domestic Animals (1859, Auburn, NY,)  The name of this treat varies from rhubarb preserve to rhubarb jam to rhubarb marmalade.

I like rhubarb a lot. How bad could this be, since so many cookbooks recommend it?  Plus, I wanted to be seasonal - rhubarb is in my garden and the oranges were the last of my winter box and were starting to look a little softer. So, we combine the end of our winter fruit with a nice new seasonal vegetable (because rhubarb really is a vegetable).  

Time to Cook!   (Or What I Did)

Ingredients

1 quart of rhubarb, finely chopped

6 naval oranges

1.4 lb of white sugar (I used up all the sugar I had left in the house.  I suppose I should mention that I have a kitchen scale)

I picked the rhubarb, removed the leaves, and cleaned off any garden dirt.  I scrubbed the outsides of my oranges.

Knowing that rhubarb stews into fibers if left long, I chopped it finely and put it into a 6-qt pot.

I peeled the oranges and, using a thin spoon, scraped off much of the white pith.  I didn't attempt to be meticulous about it because much of the pectin is in the pith and I did want this to gel.  Naval oranges are seedless, so that wasn't a problem.

Scraped oranges peels

I chopped the oranges up on a cutting board with raised sides to retain the orange juice.  At a particular point, the orange just starts pulping.  Add pulped chopped orange and juice to pot with rhubarb.

Chopped orange and juice

I then sliced the orange peel finely and decided to chop the slices, thinking about what size of peel I would wish to find on my bread.  All the chopped peel was then added to the pot.

Slivered chopped orange peel

I had a choice of a range of 1 - 1.5 lb of white sugar.  Knowing sugar helps the gelling process and also knowing that both ingredients are tart, I opted for the higher range.  I weighed it out and added it to the pot and stirred well.

Looking very pretty and colorful

Over medium heat, I cooked for about 40-45 minutes, stirring occasionally.  I had no idea how this should turn out, never having seen such a preserve before, but I did not want it to be soupy.  The rhubarb broke down during the cooking, as did the orange pulp.  I also feared overcooking and having the marmalade set up into a cake (it's happened before....).  I tested by placing dollops on a ironstone plate and watching to see how it set up.  Around 45 min, the preserves held a long drip from the spoon and sat nicely on the plate.  I called it done and spooned it into preserved canning jars.

Yield - 7 cups

At the point I stopped cooking.  You can see the color from the rhubarb is gone, but it makes the preserves opaque

Cost

rhubarb - from the garden

sugar - a about a third of the bag, so around $1.00?

oranges - we bought them at least a month ago.  Perhaps $3.00?  At this point they were leftovers

canning jelly jars - in the basement.

Total- in the neighborhood of $4.00, assuming you don't need to buy canning jars.

How Authentic Is It?

Other than cooking it on a wood or coal stove or using a more period orange, I don't see how it could be anymore authentic.

How Successful Was It?

Because of the rhubarb, the marmalade doesn't have the clarity I would expect from orange marmalade.  The opaque nature is not a failure, just something different.  It actually has more of a look of applesauce - with oranges in it.

Seasonal?  Yes, very!

The rhubarb marmalade really does have a strong orange marmalade taste - with a bit of an "other tang," which is the rhubarb.  There is no stringiness in the finished preserve. The oranges pieces are thoroughly suspended in the marmalade, which is a sign of success.  It tastes really good!