Marmalade Magic

By Mr. Dr. Frugal Scholar

I want to offer a brief follow-up of my earlier post on Meyer lemon marmalade. Although I can’t show you how great the marmalade tastes, I can document just how prodigiously economical it is to make. Contrary to the usual laws of kitchen physics, you actually end up with more than you begin with.

First, the documentation.

Here are the lemons I started with.

After squeezing, here are the peels, all nicely chopped.

Finally, here are the products: a half a gallon of lemon juice, and a half gallon of marmalade (yes, I measured).

Is there some sleight-of-hand involved here? It almost seems there must be, since the amount of lemon juice and marmalade appears to be more than the lemons could yield, whether reckoning by weight or by volume. This is in fact correct, and for a very simple reason: water. Since no part of the lemon goes unused, the total product is increased by the amount of water used to cook the peels (and I probably used more water than necessary).

Of course there’s also a little sugar involved, but not very much the way I made this batch. In fact, there’s just a little over two cups for the entire 64 ounces. I do like my marmalade on the bitter side, but in any case it’s easy to adjust the sugar content to taste.

So that’s why it’s magic marmalade: you get more than you put in.

Thanks to all for the comments and suggestions! This is a lot of fun.