The most elusive and desirable of marmalades, Wilkin & Sons' thick-cut 'Tawny' Marmalade is produced in (or at least marketed from) Tiptree, England. Tiptree is located in a place called Essex, formerly inhabited by the East Saxons or by another tribe of the same name.

This marmalade is notable for its warm, murky flavor, its dark color, and for the nearly-appropriate use of scare quotes in its name. It is distinct from the jelly sold in supermarkets as "marmalade": It is much less sweet, and its makers quaintly flavor it with oranges instead of synthetic citric acid and Red Dye Number 4.

The list of ingredients is as follows: "Sugar, Oranges". It contains no fat, no sodium, no protein, and in fact no useful nutrients of any description. We compensate for the shameful absence of fat and sodium by first buttering our muffin; the lack of protein is irrelevant to our purposes.


Tawny Marmalade is also the name of a Scottish porn star whose work we very much admire.