The January Jar: Marmalade and Proper Toast

There is a seasonal reason to bring marmalade to the table now. January is a key month for Seville oranges, the bittersweet fruit associated with traditional orange marmalade. Riverford's guide to marmalade-making is a useful introduction to that short winter opportunity.

You do not have to spend the month preserving to enjoy it. A jar you already love, a loaf you want to eat and a few minutes at the toaster are a perfectly good way in.

One of my favourite combinations is orange marmalade on toast with a little hagelslag. For anyone outside the Netherlands, those are the small chocolate sprinkles we put on bread.

The orange and chocolate are lovely together, and I like having the crunch of the toast underneath. It is a simple combination, but it is very much my sort of thing.

If you want to try it, toast your bread until it has the crunch you enjoy, spread it with orange marmalade and add a little chocolate hagelslag. You can decide how much of each sounds good to you. This does not need a weighed recipe to become breakfast.

My other favourite takes a different direction: sourdough toast, fig jam, cured ham and a little rocket.

There is the sweetness of the jam, the savoury ham and the freshness of the rocket, with that crisp bread holding everything together. This is the combination I think of when someone asks how I like to eat fig jam. Very happily, is the short answer.

Toast the sourdough, spread it with fig jam, add the ham and finish with a little rocket. Keep it easy to pick up and eat. You want a good bite of everything, including the bread.

Fig jam is a different preserve from citrus marmalade, of course. Both belong here because they are things I enjoy putting on toast. One is an orange-and-chocolate breakfast; the other is a sweet-and-savoury plate that would make a very good lunch.

If toast is already one of your favourite things, The Morning Toast Edit has more ideas for choosing bread and toppings.

I like Bonne Maman, but I especially enjoy buying preserves at farm shops. It gives me another way to choose something for the kitchen, alongside the familiar jar I already know I like.

That is part of the appeal of The Saturday Farm-Shop Round: a practical food shop can be an enjoyable part of the day in its own right.

I have made citrus marmalade before, usually with a mixture of citrus fruits, and I enjoy doing it. I also prefer to use less sugar. I no longer have the exact proportions of the version I made, so I am pointing you towards a published recipe rather than pretending to reproduce it here.

Pomona's Orange Marmalade – Light & Fresh is a lower-sugar recipe from the pectin manufacturer. It uses their specific pectin and calcium mixture; follow the recipe's fruit preparation, quantities and storage instructions, including its stated citrus substitutions. It is a recipe to explore, not one I am claiming to have personally tested.

With a lower-sugar preserve, use a recipe designed for that approach rather than simply taking sugar out of a conventional one. Oregon State University's pectin guidance explains why the product and method matter. Follow the chosen recipe's keeping instructions, too, rather than assuming every homemade jar has the same shelf life.

There is room for both kinds of January morning: the one when you feel like making marmalade, and the one when you simply want to make toast.

Apricot remains someone else's department.