Summary
Each January, with the arrival of the seville oranges, hundreds of people across the UK ritually boil and jar batches of marmalade, following family recipes and leaving their kitchens sticky and fragrant with citrus. But who's eating it? For years sales figures have been in decline and the under 25s say it's 'boring'.
So Tim Hayward heads out to a little corner of Cumbria to the Dalemain estate where the amber preserve is celebrated at the Marmalade Championships. From 'dark and chunky' to 'any citrus' hundreds of home-made and artisan examples have been entered for judging while enthusiasts dressed in orange accessories browse the presentations.
He asks whether marmalade, once commonplace on British breakfast tables, is dying a slow death or becoming the preserve of the wealthy or an enthusiastic elite. He also learns a worrying truth - could foreign marmalade makers now be beating us at making the best?
Produced in Bristol by Anne-Marie Bullock.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the |
| 0:03.8 | podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC. |
| 0:08.6 | It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world. |
| 0:15.0 | What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism |
| 0:20.0 | and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines. |
| 0:23.7 | And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject |
| 0:28.3 | you might not even have thought you were interested in. |
| 0:30.2 | Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment, |
| 0:36.0 | you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds. Early in the morning I now learn the protein I know it will be waiting for me. |
| 0:47.0 | I know it will be waiting for me. |
| 0:55.0 | We're a funny lot, us Brits. |
| 1:00.0 | We like cricket, gravy, the shipping forecast, having a good winge and queuing. |
| 1:05.0 | But perhaps the thing that marks us as oddest in the world of food is our delight in making |
| 1:10.1 | jam out of bitter oranges. Orange is lemons. |
| 1:14.0 | Though its origin is near the Mediterranean, |
| 1:17.0 | it was asked that took marmalade to our hearts centuries ago, |
| 1:20.0 | and at the peak of its popularity in the last century, |
| 1:22.0 | a jar of marmalade featured on every British breakfast table. |
| 1:26.0 | But times change. |
| 1:28.0 | Year by year, we're told, we're falling out of love with marmalade, |
| 1:32.0 | while spending more on jams, honey, peanut butter and chocolate |
| 1:36.0 | gloop. And the final insult, the under 25s have labeled it boring. The kids, it seems, are no longer down with marmalade. You would think the |
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