Sicilian Orange Marmalade Recipe - The Proustian Table (2024)

Jump to Recipe Print Recipe

This lovely, bittersweet, blood orange marmalade brightens my cold winter mornings. It also sits me once again across the breakfast table from my father, now gone almost two years. I vividly remember dipping marmalade toast in coffee as he recounted the story of the one decision his mother made that literally saved the lives of my entire family.

Both of the towns where my parents are from in Sicily are situated at the foot of Mt. Etna–Europe’s biggest and most active volcano. I will never forget my visit to the little cabin in the hills near my mother’s town of Adrano. We were all too uneasy to sleep. Mt. Etna was framed by a large picture window, and it was fantastically lighting the night sky with its fiery fountain. We had been assured that this was normal, but I believe we all slept with one eye on that window all night.

The following morning, we walked the land near the cabin. We filled baskets with fat and juicy cherries and rosy, fragrant apricots. We learned from a local that they are quite used to the ever-present danger of the volcano. In fact, they’ve nicknamed Mt. Etna “Mongibello” or beautiful mountain, since it creates a fertile soil where they grow the beautiful fruit we were enjoying. This rich earth also creates amazing grapes, olives, nuts, and the gorgeous Sanguino, or Sicilian blood orange.

Mt. Etna is an imposing symbol of the duality within Sicily and its people. It is fiery but also benevolent. In Sicily, there is lack but also great abundance, decay but also amazing beauty; there is bitter and sweet. It’s possible that many centuries of successive invasions may have bred these traits into our DNA, creating a layer cake of these interesting personality contrasts.

One such invasion was the terrible but necessary invasion of the Allied forces during World War II. Throughout the spring of 1943, the Allies bombed Sicily. As the troops moved upward toward Catania, people in small towns and villages left their homes and took to the mountains, forests, and hillsides to escape the bombing. There were very few air shelters available, so locals sheltered in caves, barns, orchards–anywhere they could. Many people in my father’s town of Paterno decided to shelter in the orange groves surrounding the town.

My grandfather, grandmother, and their three sons were among those hiding within the fragrant groves in the summer of 1943. What happened after that is one of those “butterfly effect” moments that would change the history of my family forever. My grandmother insisted she didn’t feel right about hiding there and demanded that they return to their home in town. She was so persistent that they left that grove even though their friends and neighbors implored them to stay. Instead, they chose to return to the town sure to bombed again by aerial forces. As it turned out my family, hunkered in their small apartment, survived the bombings. Those hiding in the groves would be among the hundreds who did not survive.

Despite this solemn and tragic memory, my father still associated oranges with the beautiful land his family had to leave. I do as well. I was lucky enough to visit Sicily with my father 50 years after the war. We walked together in the orange groves of his hometown, inhaling the “zagara.” This lovely word made its way from Arabic into the Sicilian dialect to describe the beautiful scent of citrus blossoms. I will forever remember that walk, that fragrance, that amazing story–every time I make this marmalade.

Aside from weekends, my father ate the same breakfast every single day: six thin pieces of toasted ciabatta or other Italian bread slathered with orange marmalade and dipped into a cup of hot coffee. I can assure you that if you’ve never had orange with coffee-you’ve missed out thus far on one of our planet’s greatest flavor combinations. The sweetness of the fragrant orange marmalade with the bitterness of the coffee creates a perfect contrast.