Marmalade Tasting

 

It was around the Christmas time when J suddenly had a taste for marmalade. I don't know why, but since then, there has been a jar of marmalade in our refrigerator. In this month, I secretly bought two new jars from Bracken Hill's, Orange & Whisky Marmalade and Orange Marmalade with Yorkshire Cider and gave them to J on his birthday.

We tasted both on toasted simple sandwich bread slices. They were pretty good. Either whisky or cider didn't pop out. Perhaps those flavors nicely melt in and created not-too-sugary-but-lovely bright orange-y preserves. One was slightly sweeter than the other although basically both tasted similar. It might have been a little bit more interesting to see some difference between them. Anyway, both were nice marmalade.

Our previous marmalade was Fortnum & Mason's The Monarch Marmalade. Like those Bracken Hill's, it was made with seville oranges, so called "bitter" oranges, which are traditionally used to make marmalade. The Monarch was certainly bitter but a good balance of bitter/sweet. It tasted like a straightforward marmalade. It was good but not wow, I mean. In fact, our first marmalade since the Christmas was Bracken Hill's Bucks Fizz Marmalade. It was made with sweet oranges and champagne. J said that was the best so far. Indeed Fizz Marmalade was wonderful and we finished the jar so quickly that I didn't have a chance to take a picture. While the champagne wasn't noticeable, the marmalade was tasty and perfumy, which J liked. Maybe seville oranges aren't not his taste after all. I guess it's time to go back to Fizz when we finish the new two jars.