Bergamot: What Not to Do
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
I grew up in the South but learned to ski from a Yankee. His name was Rob Follit, and he was a special friend of my mother's. For a time I thought he might become my stepfather. Even after that time passed, Rob still accepted a certain responsibility for his ex-girlfriend's fatherless son, and he taught me things that a teenaged boy needs to know, like how to execute an Eskimo roll in a kayak and how to ski. Rob first took me skiing in North Carolina when I was about 10—and later to Vermont and Utah—and I of course was an ingrate. When I fell off my skis, which was often, I'd get mad at him for making me do things that I couldn't yet do. He was patient. "If you're not falling," he said, "you're not learning."
Sunday afternoon at Greenvalley, Rob's words came back to me as I ruined 14 pints of Seville orange marmalade.
Just a few days earlier, I had made my first-ever batch of SEVILLE ORANGE MARMALADE with the guidance of English authority Thane Prince. Her recipe from Jellies, Jams & Chutneys was brief and somewhat irregular: ingredients were called for and then abandoned mid-process, crucial details were ellided, potential errors were warned of but the steps to avoid them neglected. Still, Prince provided the basic ratio of fruit to sugar to water, as well as the rough outlines of a technique. Beginner's luck—and good bitter oranges—supplied the rest.
The marmalade was simply superb: fragrant, supple rinds suspended in a transparent, moderately sweet jelly. The taste of peel was intense, almost spicy-hot. Like other sensual pleasures taken to the brink of pain, the flavor left an afterglow. For many minutes, my olfactory cavities resonated with the permeating essence of bitter orange. Wow.
I planned to make a big batch on Sunday and thought that I should compare Prince's recipe to others, including one from Diana Kennedy's book Nothing Fancy, the photocopied pages of which had just arrived in the mail from Greenvalley friend Tom Hudgens. I also dug into that masterpiece of 19th-century cookbooks, Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery from Modern Families. And, as far as arcana goes, I even found M.F.K. Fisher's mother's marmalade technique in Catherine Plagemann's Fine Preserving.
The differences among all these recipes spanning some 150 years and several countries were instructive. Variables included the basic ratio of fruit to sugar to water; whether to "chip" the oranges while raw or cook them whole first; whether to include pulp in the final marmalade; when and how to add the sugar and so on. I now have an opinion on all those questions.
There was also the matter of additional flavorings: Thane advised either ginger or whiskey, and Kennedy offered the option of lemon juice. No less a marmalade maker than Robert Lambert, who I met at the recent Fancy Food Fair, adds some bergamot, four specimens of which I happened to have on the counter after my recent Rare Citrus Shopping Spree.
As I usually do, I took favorite bits from various recipe and penciled out a draft copy of "my" recipe. Then I went to work. I made a slew of little missteps as I went along—undercooking the fruit slightly, intially cutting the peel in a way I disliked, miscalculating the weight of sugar needed—but none of them was beyond repair.
What did me in was the damn bergamot, from which recovery was not possible.
Citrus bergamia, I have since learned, it is a fruit of uncertain but robust parentage. It surely descends on one side from the bitter orange, but its other progenitor has been variously supposed to be the citron, the lemon, the lime or the limetta. All we know for certain is that the grapefruit had no role in the affair, since the grapefruit first appeared in the Carribbean in the 1800s. The bergamot was documented in Europe as early as 1708.
The bergamot's fruit is runty in appearance but it produces a "strongly pungent and agreeably aromatic oil" that is used in the manufacture of eau de Cologne and other cosmetics—a minor distinction among the illustrious citrus clan. The bergamot would seem even less significant were it not for British Prime Minister Lord Grey, who in the 1830s received a diplomatic gift of black tea flavored with bergamot. His drink still today carries the smell around the Anglophile world. (At Greenvalley, it's also popular in LORD GREY'S TEA PEACHES.)
What I never could have imagined is just how "strongly pungent" the bergamot it. The peel and pulp of two fruits—the amount that I had planned to include my double batch of marmalade using 6 pounds of oranges—is approximately sufficient to perfume all the tea in China.
While cutting the fruit, I got an inkling of its strength and added only one of the two. But after the heat of cooking unleashed its full fury, even that one fruit proved to be 99 parts too much. Its intensity burned the lips, and its smell—so alluring in the infinite dilution of eau de cologne—caused me the same panicky, suffocating feeling as do certain industrial cleaning products.
Although it was sheer bad judgment—throwing good money after bad—I jarred the hot marmalade, which only amounts to a waste of 14 widemouth lids. Fourteen pints!
"If you're not falling, you're not learning," I said to myself as I lined up the inedible bounty.
That may be true, but the thing about falling is that it hurts.
Reader Comments (9)
I wish my words could be as eloquent as your posts. A wonderful tale of failure and lessons learnt. We're blessed that you do not have an ego that denies such frankness and in fact celebrates the failures along with the successes. I have not been able to experience bergamots in the flesh and am thankful for the instruction.
I had a jar of marmalade in my fridge for more than two years. The fragrance was mouthwatering, the colour and clarity like golden jewels in a jar. Around it's neck a twist of raffia, like a nod to it's homemade heritage, completely at odds with the crystal globules within. This was the last produce made by my best friend before she died and I couldn't bear to let it go because all our dinner parties, Christmas cooking, celbrations and nuturings would be merely memories. It was the last tangible evidence of a friendship that was so much more. She has been gone five years now and still I have not made marmalade. The closest I came was Tomato Marmalade this year from my Grandmother's recipe book.
I love your passion and dedication and wonder, do you realise the memories and inticate web of love you weave with your cooking? For me Leslie will always be; marmalade, strawberries, pistachio, fuscia and party lights
Thank you so much.
i feel for you kevin. and so wonderful that you put this out there. i once made 16 - sixteen! - quarts of cucumber pickles that looked beautiful but upon opening and biting into what was supposed to be a pleasant crunch, experienced nothing but an awful melt in your mouth mush!
...the trials and tribulations of life and canning. ;)
I've never cooked with bergmot, but I do know it from my favourite perfume. And, know the disaster than ensues when you reach for bergamot in excess. Dressed rather finely for an evening (and morning after) with a new gentleman friend, I liberally applied some bergamot oil perfume, which heated up as the evening (and the gentleman) wore on, transferring to clothes, bellies, hands, arms, legs, the air around us in a horrible cloud, my hair which became mussed from sleep, and so on. There is nothing as gaggy as putting on last night's cocktail dress and stepping out into a fresh day, hangover on your brain like a football tackle, and stinking all the while of that now-rank perfume. GAH!
Oh dear! lol. Lesson learned, I guess, although it's a shame we can't always learn these lessons by way of others' experience rather than having to waste all that good fruit.
But hey, it makes a good story. Not a TOTAL loss, right?
I feel your pain. ;- {
This post is just hilarious. Bergamot really does require a finessed touch. It's one of my favourite fruits in the world, though when I use it for marmalade it's for straight marmalade instead of a combination type.
I'll happily take all that bergamot marmalade off your hands if you no longer want it!
Fourteen pints is a lot to lose. And all because a bergamot. Or is that berga-not! I'm sure you were looking forward to it--I know I was looking forward to the post. Aw, jeez. That's when you sigh and say, things can be a whole lot worse.
That's interesting that you had a reaction to just one in your marmalade. I've been making bergamot marmalade with 100% bergamots and found the flavor balmy and just-barely bitter.
Am wondering if perhaps there are different species of bergamots, or you found some that were sprayed or treated with something, which might have caused the disagreeable (to say the least!) flavor?
David -- thanks for your comment and all I can say is ... Wow. I'm amazed to read that you've made bergamot marmalade. Now I'm all the more mystified by my results. The bergamots I used are from Mud Creek, a farm with a lot of integrity that sells at the Santa Monica Farmers Market -- i buy a lot from them -- and David Karp praises them for what that's worth. So I don't think it's a problem with dodgy fruit. The objectionable flavor wasn't so much bitterness -- although i did find the raw bergamot more highly acidic than seville oranges -- but rather a permeating, overwhelming, suffocating bergamot fragrance -- a resinous, waxy, almost camphorated quality that hangs in the mouth and sinuses for minutes after eating the marmalade. i've tested it out to other people and they agree -- it's gross. I'm trying to get myself out to the UC Riverside Citrus Variety Collection -- maybe i'll turn up answers there -- i'll keep you posted via the blog -- best, kevin