The Seville Orange is with us again for a brief time, it usually lasts for about a month in the shops, mid January to mid February and then disappears, like les neiges d’antan
for another year

The Seville is an ugly little orange, small and pale and often with green blotches, it is also uncompromisingly bitter, inedibly so until doctored with sugar.
It is still used extensively in the manufacture of marmalade, the stuff of tradition with a strong intense orange flavour and a sharp bite of chunky peel, a distant relative of the sweet jelly stuff that often passes as marmalade today.
It is also still used in France in the manufacture of Cointreau which would be a pale and soft imitation of itself but for the balancing astringency furnished by the Seville.

I have succeeded in making my self a delicious orange liqueur by suspending a Seville, tired by string, over a pint of alcohol ( cheap vodka is perfect) in a large glass jar with a good tight lid for about six months.
The orange should hang over the alcohol without touching it and the fumes will dissolve all the colour and flavour from the orange leaving it pale flabby and anaemic.
The resulting liqueur needs sweetening with sugar or sugar syrup to make it palatable.

But here are two more recipes for using the Seville before it departs.

Seville Orange Marmalade

1.5kg (3 lbs) Seville Oranges
3 litres Water
3 kgs. Sureset Sugar. Or Caster Sugar

Put the whole Oranges into a large pot with the water and simmer together for about 90 mts.or until the skin is tender .
Take the oranges out of the water with a slotted spoon and cool, leave the water in the pot.
When they cool halve the oranges and remove the pips. Either discard these or put them in a little square of muslin tied at the edges to boil with the marmalade.
Now cut the halves of orange as finely or thickly as you like.
(If you don't care too much about the appearance you can chop them up roughly in batches in a food processor)
Put these back into the orange water and add in the sureset sugar.
Bring gradually back to the boil (with the little bag of pips if you are using them) stirring to dissolve the sugar.Let it boil well for 5 mts. test for setting on a cool saucer.It should take no longer than 10 mts. boiling altogether.
If you use Caster Sugar boil for about 20 mts and then start to test for setting and pot only as soon as a little has set on a cool saucer.
Take out and discard the bag of pips, and pot in the usual way.
If you like the flavour of ginger with orange (and I do) you can add two peeled thumbs of root ginger to the oranges as they boil and then chop these finely with the peel and add to the marmalade.

Caneton Bigarade ( Duck with Seville Orange Sauce)
(serves 2 to 3)
1 Duck
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
150 ml white wine
500 ml. Duck Giblet (or chicken) stock
3 Seville Oranges ( or two sweet oranges and one lemon)
1 tablespoon Honey
Salt and Pepper
A shot of Orange Liquour or Brandy.

To cook put the duck on a grill in a roasting tray and pour a little water into the tray underneath the duck.
Then put them into an oven set at 190C (Gas 5, 375F) for 35 minutes, then turned the oven down to 150C (Gas 2,300F) for another hour.
Meanwhile you can make the sauce.
Let the butter turn hazelnut brown in a pot and then stir in the flour to make a brown roux.
Add the stock and the wine and then boil hard until it is your desired thickness.
Peel the skin from the oranges with a potato peeler and slice them into thin slivers, (or use a little lemon zester to do the same job )add these and the juice of the oranges to the sauce and then season with salt, pepper and sweeten with a little honey and a shot of the liquour.
Once the duck is cooked let it rest for 20 minutes in a warm place before carving.