Cocktails with Orange marmalade
Orange marmalade is a citrus preserve of orange juice and peel boiled with sugar into a jelly-like set, with shreds of peel suspended through it.
Taste profile
Sweet and jammy, cut by a clear bitterness from the cooked peel and pith, over a strong aroma of cooked bitter orange.
How it's used
Marmalade brings sweetness, acidity, bitterness and orange aroma all at once, which is why bartenders reach for it. It's the heart of the Breakfast Martini and a fine addition to a whisky sour. It's thick and clumps when cold, so stir a barspoon of it into the spirit in the shaker before adding ice, then shake hard and fine-strain. A fine-cut or shredless marmalade gives the cleanest result.
Substitutes for Orange marmalade
The easiest swap is another citrus marmalade — lemon or mixed-citrus — for a slightly different but very close result. A smooth citrus jam works too, with less bite from the peel. If you have no marmalade at all, orange curaçao or fresh orange with sugar syrup can carry the flavour — rebuild the sweetness with syrup and the tang with fresh citrus. Bear in mind curaçao adds alcohol, so the drink will need rebalancing. Hardest to replace are the cooked-peel bitterness and the body from the pectin.
Often confused with
Citrus jam / fruit jam
Marmalade suspends citrus peel in its set and, under EU law, must be made from citrus. Jam is a preserve of fruit pulp, without the defining peel, and can be any fruit.
