Enter the Dalemain Marmalade Competition and See Your Marmalade Stocked in Fortnum & Mason

Dalemain Marmalade Competition, Penrith, Cumbria

Seville oranges are in the shops and there are still a few days left to enter this uniquely British competition which attracts a following from all over the world.

Dalemain Marmalade Competition is run in conjunction with Fortnum & Mason

Bring the Sunshine into Your Kitchen This Weekend

Once Seville oranges hit the supermarket shelves, the culinary equivalent of a sunny day is injected into kitchens across Britain. Marmalade enthusiasts reach for their preserving pans, thermometers, chopping knives and spoons, wafting the scent of orange zest throughout the home. Known for their high pectin content, Seville oranges produce the best marmalade.

And there’s a heady incentive too. The winner of the Dalemain Marmalade Competition, now in its 12th year, receives a juicy prize – the honour of seeing their marmalade stocked in Fortnum & Mason, Britain’s most distinguished grocer. The competition attracts thousands of entries from all over the world with the winning marmalade raising funds for charity.

Fortnum & Mason Cook Book

A British Tradition

We love our marmalade in Britain. Spread on buttered toast in the morning and enjoyed with a cup of English breakfast tea, it’s a quintessential part of our daily morning ritual. Originally a quince paste from Spain, it was in the 1600s that it first became the marmalade we associate today.

It’s not hard to tap into the history of our national preserve on your travels. Visit Oxford and a short walk from the railway station, you can have breakfast at The Jam Factory where Frank Cooper’s Marmalade was originally made. It was actually his wife, Sarah, who made it (although it seems that Frank was more than happy for his name to grace the breakfast table). At the Tiptree Tea Rooms and Museum in Essex, you can see the pots and pans used for boiling the fruit.

In York, the city that produced the iconic Terry’s Chocolate Orange, there’s a jar of marmalade on display at York Castle Museum. It was taken by Ernest Shackleton to Antarctica. Just off London’s famous Portobello Road, at the quirky Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising, there are old jars of Robertson’s Golden Shred marmalade embellished with Golliwoggs. The Golly first appeared on jars in 1910 but the character was removed in 2001.

But it’s not just spread on toast. Travel around the country and you’ll taste it in many delicious forms. At Chartwell, the family home of Sir Winston Churchill in Kent, where he insisted a marmalade cat should always be in residence, I ate Dundee cake. Glazed with marmalade, it was Churchill’s favourite. The Keiller family, famous as the founders of the first commercial brand of marmalade – used factory downtime to make this legendary Scottish cake. At Abergavenny Food Festival in Wales, I tried dark chocolate with marmalade, a bitter sweet triumph from Nom Nom, a young Welsh chocolate co-operative. My favourite though, was on a Herefordshire potato farm, headquarters of the Chase distillery where they produce a divine marmalade vodka. Try it drizzled over Heston Blumenthal’s marmalade on toast ice cream (available at Waitrose).

Should you decide to rise to the challenge this weekend and make marmalade, you can check out all the important info here. There are special collection points across the country from where Virgin Trains will whisk the entries to Cumbria.

Melt Chocolate Toast & Marmalade Bar