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The Food Programme: Marmalade

Marmalade

24/03/2013

BBC Radio 4 - The Food Programme, Marmalade

Tim Hayward asks if Britain can still hold its own in the competitive marmalade stakes.

For years figures have shown marmalade sales continually dropping, but Tim Hayward visits the quirky marmalade awards in Cumbria to see who is championing it and making the best.

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.

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