A Tale of Two Marmalades

The first aftermath of the Lemony Day was the Meyer Lemon and Vanilla Bean Marmalade. Which spontaneously begat two jars of orange marmalade, one with vanilla, one not. I had better explain. 

Therese at work saw my posting and told me she had just made marmalade. A trade was arranged. Agents speaking into their lapels made the exchange under the cover of the thick San Francisco fog. 

 

Therese's orange marmalade (on the left, above) was full of long, chunky arcs of candied rind. My lemon marmalade (right) had the rinds in much thinner bits. (Oh, and I need to post the recipe for the cornbread that's showcasing the marmalades.)

 
Therese's orange marmalade

Curiously, they don't taste as different as I expected. I expected mine to be more lemony. Even the color is close.

 Lemon marmalade? Hard to tell! 

As for the vanilla, it's pretty hard to detect in my lemon marmalade, and I doubled the vanilla by adding some vanilla extract. In Therese's, it brings a depth of flavor without revealing itself as vanilla. If she didn't tell me it was there, I would not have identified it as vanilla. 

Bottom line? I liked both but the thicker rind in Therese's makes it a winner. After a second tasting, I was loving the flavor, too. Hers tastes like exploding fruit! My next batch will mimic that by cutting the slices thicker and cooking less. I have to get her recipe.

Comments

[Carolyn Jung]

Oooh, I'm going to try that next time, too -- cutting the lemon slices thicker. I do like my marmalades with distinctive bits of peel.