Our Marmalade Story

‘Cookery Receipts’ is the title of Plum Duff & Stuff’s 19th Century recipe book in which this Seville orange marmalade recipe is written.

The book was started in the early 1800s and includes many other interesting hand-written recipes. Parisian Café au lait, beef palates, salt cod, plum duff pudding for Christmas and many more, even a potion for chilblains.

The marmalade recipe apparently originated from the cook at Government House in Bermuda. The Governor’s daughter married a family ancestor and subsequently added her own recipes to the ‘Cookery Receipts’ section – at the end of her marmalade entry she added the words ‘Excellent receipt’.

Following Bermuda’s severe economic slump (caused by the decline in the West Indian sugar cane production, brought on by the abolition of slavery), the Governor decided to encourage agriculture and improve the island’s orange and lemon tree orchards by importing new stock. So, via the Colonial Office, he accepted the Royal Horticultural Society’s offer ‘to send out some young orange and lemon trees, of five kinds, in glazed boxes, to arrive by Royal Naval ship’.

His watercolour of Seville oranges painted in 1846 was sent with his report which included the words ‘the culture of the orange and lemon trees…offers an inducement for gardeners to settle here’.

Marmalade, made faithfully following this 1849 recipe, was first available on the Plum Duff & Stuff Christmas Pudding stalls in 2007 and, since then, sales have increased so much that every January is virtually devoted to its production.

.