One of the few truly seasonal activities left in the modern kitchen, making Seville orange marmalade for the first time this week made me very happy.  I liked the connection I felt going back through time, through my mother (the Marmalade Queen) and all my grandmothers and great-grandmothers, for centuries.  I added a couple of lemons, as many people do, and the fragrance in the kitchen was spectacular.

As I started rather late at night, and hadn’t really prepared anything in advance (like scrubbing and sterilising jars), I did the basic squeezing and shredding, then left it till the morning (5am) when I got up to bake for the Cornwood Stores.  While the doughs were rising, I sterilised the jars, and managed to dissolve Billingtons Caster sugar in the fruit and water, but then I had to stop to shape the loaves… I finally got to boil it all up around 3 o’clock in the afternoon.  Marmaladus Interruptus!  But it worked.  Deliciously.