Preserved Lemons or Oranges
The fruit must be perfectly ripe, of the best quality, with a smooth rind and fine color. Cut out from the stem end of each, a piece not quite the size of a quarter dollar, and with a small knife scoop out all the inside, keeping the rind as whole as possible. Put the pulp and juice into a large bowl, and clear it from the strings and seeds. Lay the skins in a tureen of cold ice water, and change it twice during the day, (fresh water and fresh ice); and at bedtime put ice only. Next morning boil the skins slowly in a porcelain kettle with plenty of water, keeping them well covered. Continue to boil till they are tender all through, and can easily be pierced with a splinter skewer. Then drain them, and lay them in cold water immediately. Take care to boil with them the small round pieces that come out of the top. Make a thick jelly or marmalade of the pulp and juice of these, and some additional fruit, allowing to a pint of juice a pound of loaf sugar. When the jelly has been boiled till clear and firm when held in the air, fill with it the skins so as to swell them out into a good shape. Replace the small circular pieces that have been cut off the top of the fruit, and tie them on securely with packthread, so as to keep in the jelly. Next make a thin syrup, allowing to a pound of broken-up loaf sugar half a pint of fresh juice, and the beaten white of an egg. Boil and skim it till no more scum rises. Then having put the oranges into large glass jars rather more than half full, pour the syrup on them, filling up to the top.
To Green Small Lemons or Limes.—Boil them first in a little hard water, placing them in a porcelain kettle with a thick bed of fresh vine leaves under them and a thick cover of vine leaves over them. Boil them till green and tender in two or three waters, putting entirely fresh vine leaves whenever you change the water, and persisting till they are well greened. Then make holes in the stem end, and extract the pulp, strings, and seeds, and proceed as directed in the last receipt. The skins, as soon as empty, being laid in cold water, and then filled and shaped out with lemon jelly, and the jars filled up warm with lemon syrup. Or by putting a larger portion of sugar, and boiling the syrup longer, you may candy it all over the surface of the fruit.
Green limes are preserved in the above manner, filling the skins with lemon jelly. To candy the syrup use a double portion of sugar, and boil it till it bubbles and sparkles in the kettle.