The Seville is a ‘sour’ orange as opposed to a ‘sweet’ orange. This is a medium to large, thick-skinned orange with high levels of bitterness and acidity. The majority of Seville oranges are used to make marmalade, though they are also used for juice production, jam, crystallised fruit, liqueurs, and the skin yields very good citrus oil.
Manufacturers of marmalade have only one chance each year to stock-up on supplies of Seville oranges which are harvested in Spain in January and February. To keep production going throughout the year, they buy a large proportion of the crop and freeze it until needed in the factory.
Good Fruit Guide Rating: *****
For culinary use only, Seville oranges are perfect for wonderful home-made marmalade.
Culinary, sour, marmalade.
Names: Seville; Sevillano; Citrus aurantium L. = Sour orange
Origin: The sour orange is thought to have originated in the region of North East India-Burma.
Grown in: Seville and Málaga in southern Spain; China and Japan.
Harvest & Availability
- January: Spain
- February: Spain
- March:
- April:
- May:
- June:
- July:
- August:
- September:
- October:
- November:
- December:
Websites:
Recipes for Marmalade: The best marmalade is made from Seville oranges, sugar and water with a sugar to orange ratio of about 2 to 1. For various different approaches to the art of marmalades, here are a selection of recipes:
- BBC Food – Ultimate Seville Orange Marmalade
- Delia Online – Traditional Seville Orange Marmalade
- River Cottage – Seville Orange Marmalade
My personal experience is that the simplest approach is best. I like Delia Smith’s recipe, but use less sugar (more like 1 to 1 ratio, sugar to orange) as we like the tartness of marmalade, and less water to hasten the process of reaching setting point. The Delia Online website has a very good video of the process of assessing when the marmalade is ready for bottling: the trickiest part of the whole exercise. The process of reaching the correct setting point for bottling takes place after the sugar is added, during which the heat is turned up to get the mixture into a rolling boil. It always seems to take far longer than recipes suggest and is the part of the process that needs most attention. It is easy to get slightly impatient and end up either with marmalade that is too loose, or marmalade that is over-cooked and darker in colour than is ideal: keep watching, keep stirring and keep a morning free!
