To make a hot toddy with marmalade, warm 4 oz of water with a heaping spoonful of lemon marmalade and a little lemon juice until steaming, pour it into a mug, and stir in 1½ oz of whisky or another spirit. The marmalade takes the place of the honey.
The drink under the garnish is very old. Liquor.com dates the toddy to the mid-18th century and describes the original as a spirit, sugar and hot water, sometimes with lemon peel or spices. The Irish used Irish whiskey, the Scots used Scotch, and Americans poured whatever they had, often brandy or rum.
The Glenlivet distillery calls its marmalade version, a spoonful of orange marmalade stirred into the toddy, a Scottish twist on the classic, and writer Leslie Pariseau built a whole Marmalade Toddy for TASTE on the classic template. Her version, finished with half an orange wheel and grated nutmeg, keeps honey or brown sugar syrup and ¾ oz of lemon juice alongside the marmalade. Ours goes further with a lemon marmalade: the jar supplies the sweetness and most of the lemon.
Hot toddy recipe with lemon marmalade
Based on TASTE's Marmalade Toddy, with the mug-warming step borrowed from Liquor.com's Hot Toddy. Treat the lemon juice as adjustable; marmalades vary in sweetness and acidity from jar to jar.
Makes 1 drink · Prep 3 minutes · Heat 3 minutes · Ready in about 6 minutes
Ingredients
- 4 oz (120 ml) water, or brewed black tea
- 1 heaping tbsp Eureka Lemon Marmalade or Meyer Lemon Marmalade
- ¼ oz (7 ml) lemon juice, freshly squeezed, plus more to taste
- 1½ oz (45 ml) blended Scotch, or bourbon, rye or Irish whiskey
- Half an orange wheel and freshly grated nutmeg, to garnish
Steps
- Fill a mug with boiling water and leave it for a minute or two to warm.
- Combine the water or tea, the marmalade and the juice in a little saucepan.
- Warm it over medium heat, stirring, until it steams and no lumps of marmalade remain.
- Empty the mug and pour in the hot mixture.
- Add the spirit and stir gently.
- Taste, and add a little more lemon juice if you'd like it sharper.
- Float the orange wheel on top and grate nutmeg over it.
Notes
- The peel: the shreds are edible, so straining is optional (TASTE leaves it to you); pour through a small sieve if you'd rather not have them.
- The regular version: use ½ oz (15 ml) honey syrup (honey thinned 1:1 with water) and ¾ oz (22 ml) lemon juice in place of the marmalade; TASTE uses both together. For the classic, sweeten with 2 teaspoons of demerara sugar and push 4 cloves into a piece of lemon (Liquor.com).
- Other spirits: almost any spirit makes a good toddy, from rum to mezcal to gin, by Liquor.com's reckoning.
What the marmalade replaces
A heaping tablespoon of marmalade does the work of the ½ oz of honey or sugar syrup, and it brings body and a bitter edge from the cooked peel as well. Because lemon marmalade adds acid as well as sweetness, the ¾ oz of squeezed lemon drops to ¼ oz; the same rule appears in our marmalade cocktails guide. Taste once the spirit is in. Too sharp, and another teaspoon of marmalade fixes it; too sweet, and you can build the juice back up a quarter ounce at a time. The shreds of peel stand in for the usual lemon wheel or twist.
Heat the marmalade with the water in a saucepan, as TASTE does; stirred straight into a mug, it tends to sit in lumps at the bottom.
Eureka or Meyer?
Eureka gives the more classic toddy. The fruit comes from our 1897 grove in Redlands and is picked in summer, when its acidity has softened, so the jar tastes of lemon drops and clean lemon peel rather than sour lemon. If you like a sharp toddy, this is the jar that may want the extra quarter ounce of juice.
Meyer Lemon Marmalade makes a softer, more floral mug, with a delicate peel finish. Its acidity is soft too, so taste before serving and add juice if needed. Try it with bourbon, or in the version made with black tea instead of water.
Making hot toddies for a group
Make a marmalade syrup first and the rest is simple. Warm a 1:1 mix of marmalade and water until loose and strain out the peel. Refrigerate it in a clean jar and use it within about a week. For a pot of toddies, heat the water or tea with syrup and lemon to taste, hold it just below a simmer, and let each person add their own spirit in the mug. That also leaves a spirit-free mug for anyone who wants one.
Photo by Gabriel Sepúlveda on Unsplash.
