My first poncirus marmalade tastes good.

[usirius]

Thank you for your feedback and further inspiration. I will also take a closer look at the topic of oil, I still have a handful of fences.

Before that I will cook a handful of fruits from my HRS899 seedling (=HRS899 F1 generation) jam. It is without any damage regarding incredible frost hardness (-17°C = 1,4 °F), and it doesn't get colder with me - she probably can stand even more cold) and in her habit it shows a lot of similarity to Poncirus trifoliata, only the fruits are much more pleasant in taste, hardly any poncirin in the skin and in the juice and flesh not at all.
For me it is simply the only really edible citrus fruit for USFA Zone 7 and maybe also Zone 6.

[usirius]

Concerning my Poncirus x Changsa mandarin HRS899 seedling (F1 Generation)  see also my former postings:

http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=30863.msg369960#msg369960
http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=30891.msg367967#msg367967 

[usirius]

Yesterday I had the time and leisure to make a small amount of jam from my first harvest with several fruits of HRS899 Poncirus x Changsha - F1 - seedling. I had already reported about the fruit quality under another category here, after I ate a fruit for the first time - the years before I didn't even dare because of the big similarity to Poncirus....

All the bigger was the surprise - the fruit has practically no bitterness of poncirus in the flesh and in the flesh very much reduced, I would say not even 1/3 compared to the real Poncirus. And as reported in the other column - it represents for me in the habitus regarding growth, Bedornung, leaves, blooms, fruits and in the winter hardness a full substitute for Poincirus trifoliata, thus a quite frost hardy citrus.

(if you like to know more about please see my former postings:
http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=30863.msg369960#msg369960
http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=30891.msg367967#msg367967  )

So I decided to cook a marmalade of the remaining five fruits. Not much, but groundbreaking for the possible use of such a "poncirus" with relatively pleasant tasting early morning fruits.

It was interesting after cutting the fruits that exactly those I had actively pollinated, two of them with Citrus lemonade (from New Zealand) and one with Flying Dragon, grew smaller, did not form any seeds, and instead had growth disturbances (adhesions).

After removing the seeds, I chopped them up, weighed them (75 grams) and added the same amount of sugar. I added some water because it seemed too dry to me.

After boiling and cooling down a wonderful yellow looking marmalade has developed, whose taste is only slightly poncirus-like, otherwise a bit like British orange marmalade. However, it has not gelled so well and may be due to too small a quantity, too short a boil or too much water.

Of course, you could minimize the pncirus taste even more by reducing the amount of peel or omitting it, but I think that's a bit harsh and by the way, my wife is just that, which makes the jam something special.

By the way, some resin remained on the knife after cutting, not as much as it is with Poncirus fruits, but still something.

Conclusion: This variety is worth cultivating in regions where only Poncirus can usually be planted. So zone 7, maybe zone 6, I haven't been able to test it yet because I am living in zone 7b. But so far there was also frost damage, not the slightest one. Enough words, enjoy the pictures!

[bussone]

Yesterday I had the time and leisure to make a small amount of jam from my first harvest with several fruits of HRS899 Poncirus x Changsha - F1 - seedling. I had already reported about the fruit quality under another category here, after I ate a fruit for the first time - the years before I didn't even dare because of the big similarity to Poncirus....

...

After boiling and cooling down a wonderful yellow looking marmalade has developed, whose taste is only slightly poncirus-like, otherwise a bit like British orange marmalade. However, it has not gelled so well and may be due to too small a quantity, too short a boil or too much water.

Of course, you could minimize the pncirus taste even more by reducing the amount of peel or omitting it, but I think that's a bit harsh and by the way, my wife is just that, which makes the jam something special.

I decided to try making a poncirus marmalde/jelly this year, from some standard trifoliata fruit I had scrounged from a tree in the neighborhood and some Flying Dragon fruit I eBayed from the SE Pennsylvania area. The fruits had been frozen, which I've done with Sevilles before when I didn't have time to cook them in the fall.

My plan was to combine two recipes -- the pre-boil and sit tactic of this recipe, which discards the cooking water. This greatly cuts down on the initial work and hopefully some of the stickiness of poncirus.
https://www.saveur.com/food/orange-marmalade-recipe/

With this poncirus jelly recipe, which strongly suggests you will discard the sliced peel.
https://mariannewillburn.com/how-to-make-poncirus-marmalade-from-hardy-oranges/

So in general, I was assuming 1:1 sugar versus initial fruit mass, and would likely need to add additional water to make up for discarded cooking water/juice. As it turned out, the juice/pulp was relatively scanty. It seemed the fruits were basically seeds with some pulp, as opposed to pulp with some seeds.


I also discovered that the suggestion to discard the peel was a solid one. Seville peel is pretty bad before it's functionally candied, but poncirus is worse, and the menthol overtones were pretty strong. Thus, I was really making a jelly.

After additional water and the sugar, it resulted in about 2.5 pint jars.


The flavor improved substantially with sugar. I've found these taste more like lemons to me than they do like oranges. (There's a sense of floor cleaner or Lemon Pledge to poncirus...) I would characterize it as probably closest in nature to bergamot. (Which I tend to think has the same issues) But with enough sweetness, it's pretty good -- lemon drop-ish in flavor.

Man, it takes a lot of PT fruit to make two pints, though. They are pretty jealous of their pulp.

[Till]

Very interesting experiences!

I can only emphasize what Citradia put again to memory: If you let the juice of Poncirus stand in an open glas for one night and throw away the bottom fraction of the juice you get juice free from sticky oils and free or at least almost free from tan flavour. You can make a very tasty lemonade from it and surely also a very tasty marmelade. The taste of the lemonade is very similar to orange lemonade but has a bit more complex flavour. Depending of the Poncirus cultivar it can be bitter - a pleasant kind of bitterness - or not bitter. I have already made tasty lemonade from very bad tasting Poncirus fruits. The off-flavours seem to get chemically dissolved or vaporized.

[poncirsguy]

Can i substitute common American persimmons for the sure jell for pectin.

[bussone]

I used canned pectin mostly because I didn't have enough juice in which to soak the seeds for their pectin.

With Sevilles, I don't bother with additional pectin because I get enough from putting a muslin/cheesecloth sack of seeds into the resting juice. Here, I didn't have enough juice to do that, and with the additional water, I didn't want to risk it not setting. Frankly, the sugar/liquid ratio was so high it probably would have set up anyway, but again, didn't want to chance it.

I didn't have any problems with stickiness with the juice/pulp, and there wasn't any pine/menthol off-flavor to it. There was some residual stickiness in the peels/rinds, but it wasn't terrible. I think the boil step eliminated the worst of it. (Ethanol also works for this)

If I did it again, knowing I'm likely to discard the rinds, I would probably have juiced the oranges before pulping them and running them through the food mill. That would probably maximize the yielded liquid. I also probably would have held the boil/simmer step longer, in the hope of cooking out more of the off flavors.