Fine Cut Sicilian Ruby Orange Marmalade

There’s not many foods more quintessentially British than marmalade. Expect, of course, that Blood oranges, with their light, naturally sweet taste, don’t grow in the UK.

Fortunately, when they’re picked from the sunny groves of Sicily, organic blood oranges are so acidic that they don’t need freezing, chilling or air-freighting.

While the fruit isn’t British, the expertise and craftsmanship is. Like our preserves, honey and lemon curd, our marmalades are made by our jam makers, Crabtree & Evelyn. Down in Somerset, past the Mendip Hills, nestles their jam factory – a glorious place thick with the aroma of sticky, juicy fruits.

Don’t be put off by the name factory – most of what goes on here involves traditional skills and a lot of hard-work done by hand. When they’re making our Sicilian Ruby Orange Marmalade, they check all the prepared oranges for blemishes by eye, before stirring the boiling fruit and sugar mixture by hand with huge paddles.

The marmalade is made in traditional copper-bottomed boiling pans, which give a depth of flavour that no industrial method of production can match. It’s hot and tiring work that still requires great finesse and skill if you’re to get the marmalade made without reducing the fruit to a pulp.

After boiling, our marmalade makers test the acidity of the fruit and then check how well the sugar has been absorbed using a refractometer (we’re not making this up, there really is such a thing). Then it’s piped (carefully) at a sweltering 88 degrees Celsius to the bottling area where jars are on stand-by.

It’s what toast was invented for.

Ingredients

Orangic sugar, blood oranges, acidity regulator: citric acid*, gelling agent: fruit pectin*, prepared with 45g of fruit per 100g, total sugar content 65g per 100g.

*approved non-organic ingredient

Nutrition Information