Hard-Boiled Oranges

What do we do with oranges today? Eat them right up. We can always get more at the supermarket.

But 200 or 300 years ago, fresh oranges were expensive luxuries in northern Europe (and probably “fresh” wasn’t always the exact word for them). If you could get oranges, they were great for impressing your guests. But one of the main things on your mind would be how to preserve them, to savor their rich flavor and majestic color all year.

The really distinctive flavor of an orange is in the peel, and by Shakespeare’s time people were already making the orange peel jam we know as marmalade. Of course, marmalade itself had originally been made from quinces, which soften and turn a beautiful rose color when poached in syrup, but oranges, with their substantial pectin content, jelled so impressively that by the 18th century, “marmalade” usually meant orange marmalade.

That was only one tactic for dealing with the orange problem. Another, popular in the 17th century, was oranges “preserved after the Portugal fashion.” For this, you would cut a quarter-sized hole in the side of an orange and scrape all the contents out. Then you’d boil the hollow peel for an hour or so to soften it and leach out some of the bitterness. Then you’d poach it in sugar syrup to candy it, and finally you’d fill it with ground candied orange peel and poach it some more.

It came out like a solid, gleaming globe of bitter marmalade. The best part was that you could present it to your guests and then slice right through it (as one recipe put it, “It cuts like an hard-boiled egg”), revealing the bright candied interior.