Preserving Hairy Bikers' Best of British

You know, we believe that Britain has the best food in the world.

Not only can we boast fantastic ingredients...

'Outstanding food producers...'

'And innovative chefs...'

'But we also have an amazing food history.'

-Oh, wow!

-Don't eat them like that. You'll break your teeth.

Now during this series,

we're going to be taking you on a journey into our culinary past.

-Everything's ready, so let's get cracking.

-'We'll explore its revealing stories.'

SI AND DAVE: Wow!

'And meet the heroes that keep our food heritage alive.'

It's a miracle what comes out of the oven.

'And of course be cooking up a load of dishes

'that reveal our foodie evolution.'

Look at that. That's a proper British treat.

We have a taste of history.

-Quite simply...

-BOTH: The best of British!

'Tell you what, you know what bees have in common with people?'

'Oh no, is this one of your jokes?'

'Well, no. Well, since you ask, bees are the only animal other than humans

'that treat their food to make it keep longer!'

'Today's programme is all about preserving.'

'The British have some of the best and most diverse preserving traditions in the world.'

We've been preserving food for centuries.

When supplies ran short in the winter months and fresh produce didn't keep that long,

we became masters at conserving food.

Some of Britain's best food products have emerged from our long tradition of preserving

and it proves that practical can be very, very tasty.

Your Janie's been busy, mate.

She has, hasn't she?

'Some of the flavours we enjoy most, like sweet jam,

'smoked fish and salty bacon, come from methods of preserving our grub.'

'We're going to explore those methods, which were once a way of life

'for thousands of British people.'

-'And open the lid on the...

-..Ingenious

-..idea,

'which changed food preservation forever.'

'We'll be discovering the unique flavours only preserving can develop,

'by cooking up an old fruity classic and an Indian-influenced pickle

'that sets dishes ablaze.'

'And we uncover the story of a food icon

'that's the very best of British.'

'For our first recipe we're going to make piccalilli,

'a pickled preserve that takes a succulent ham hock with a crispy skin

'and totally transforms it.'

'As with many British foods,

'piccalilli is a recipe that is influenced from abroad,

'in this case, by India.'

It's not just any old piccalilli, this is our piccalilli.

It's bouncing, banging hot.

It'll set a ham sandwich alight.

A little ham hock with a potato salad, you drizzle the piccalilli on and all of a sudden,

-Whoa! You've have got a party.

-You have. In your mouth.

And because it's a preserve and a pickle, that party's going to go on for years.

'To kick things off, we're going to prepare the ham hock

'by rubbing them all over with oil and seasoning with salt and pepper.'

'A ham hock is a cured cut of meat made from the leg, just below the knee joint.'

Because it's cooked on the bone, it keeps the moisture in the meat and it's very gelatinous. Lovely.

And all that skin's going to go lovely and crispy and gorgeous.

'Piccalilli is what gives us the big flavour hit in this dish.

'Our version uses green beans, courgettes and cauliflower.'

Now, the first references that we can find to piccalilli is by Mrs Raffald,

who in 1772, wrote recipes for Indian chutney or piccalillio.

She said, "It's a chutney made with mustard

"and you can use whatever's to hand, be it kidney beans, cabbage or indeed radishes."

In the early 1900s,

it was known as Indian pickle or English chow chow.

The recipes twist and change depending on what you fancy and what your family's done

because I always think there's a great family history when it comes to pickling

and everybody's got their own little twists and recipes and I love that.

'Depending on the size of your ham hock, cook it at 180 degrees

'for an hour and a half.'

-My friend, could you transform this cauliflower into a myriad of fine florets?

-I can.

We want dinky florets, bite-sized pieces,

just ones that are going to get mixed up and burst on your tongue.

By bottling and pickling, you actually create a different product.

I mean, you don't just preserve it, you turn it into something else.

Pickling! You're turning cauliflower into a relish.

-Come on, these are getting bigger now.

-That's only little!

-Into four, like so. There is a piccalilli etiquette, you realise.

-Oh, yes.

Go on... And again, quadrants.

You see? That's what you want for your piccalilli.

-What about that, look? That's nice.

-Too big.

THEY LAUGH

Right...

'That's all the veg done now. All we've got to do

'is to salt them, using 100 grams of fine sea salt.'

This is to dry out all the water from the said veg.

When the water's out, we replace that with spice and vinegar

and it becomes a pickle!

Lovely colours, isn't it?

I want to make sure all those little bits of veg are covered with salt.

It may look as though there is a lot of salt there, but it's necessary.

-We're going to wash it off.

-We are, that's key.

-So don't worry.

Cover that with cling film for 24 hours.

We put this in the fridge for 24 hours for the brining to happen.

You'll be pleased to know that's the second batch.

We got the first batch on yesterday.

And here we are, brined!

-It doesn't look appreciably different.

-It doesn't, does it?

-It stinks a bit though.

-Ooh, yes.

-Oh, aye.

Basically we need to wash the salt off

and that kind of sulphurous odour.

'Honestly, don't worry about the smell. When you wash the salt off,

'it freshens up a treat.'

'Now we need to chop up three medium-sized onions

'and boil them in 300 millilitres of malt vinegar for about 15 minutes.'

'We'll also need 300 millilitres of white wine vinegar.

'I'm going to use five tablespoons of it to blend the spices in.'

It's time to get things hot.

Now to this, a tablespoon of turmeric.

This is what makes a piccalilli a banging yellow colour.

And add to the vinegar and turmeric a very heaped tablespoon,

maybe even a little more, of English mustard powder.

Yes. This one's a feisty one.

To that, a heaped teaspoon of powdered ginger.

And if that wasn't enough,

a heaped teaspoon of chilli flakes.

It's a bit nouveau this, but heck it works.

Mustard, chilli, ginger!

And when you eat it, you see that there, Dave's T-shirt,

that's the reaction.

THEY WHOOP

'Finally, add 25 grams of cornflour

'to thicken up the spice and vinegar mix.'

Can you smell... hot vinegar, onion?

-It's all starting to happen.

-It is, isn't it?

I love that smell.

Right-oh. Now to that, we add the remaining white wine vinegar.

'Next, add in 250 grams of granulated sugar.'

And as we're finding in our odyssey of the best of British,

the sweet and sour pops up all the time.

-All the time.

-We're mad for it.

-My favourite, favourite taste combination.

-Sweet as sweet.

-Sour, ooh.

-That's perfect.

-It is.

-Perfect balance.

That's the key to sweet and sour, particularly with pickles.

You've have got to get that balance right because if it's too sour, nobody's going to eat it.

If it's too sweet, you might as well have made jam.

That is the perfect balance. Ying, Yang, Fred, Ginger, cheese, bread,

-that sort of thing.

-Si and Dave!

'Simmer the veg with the onions and vinegar for 10 to 15 minutes,

'but look, don't over do it, eh?'

When you put your piccalilli on your pork pie, or tureen, or ham hock,

you just want it go crunch.

The last thing in the world you want is to be able to spread your cauliflower.

-What will we do?

-Could go to the pub and get pickled?

-Good idea.

'The ancient methods of preservation like pickling were relied on for centuries,

'but science has played its part in keeping food edible too.'

'And in the 18th century,

'there was a revolution in the way we preserved our foods.'

FRENCH NATIONAL ANTHEM

'In the 1790s, Napoleon had a problem -

'how to feed his vast armies conquering Europe.'

'And the solution came from an unusual source...'

Champagne!

DRUM ROLL

Champagne!

Champagne!

'In 1795, the French government offered 12,000 francs

'to anyone who could come up with a way

'of keeping the food edible for the squaddies.'

'Confectioner and brewer Nicolas Apert claimed the prize

'by preserving food in champagne bottles.'

'Apert put his prepared food into glass bottles,

'sealing them with a cork and wax and then heating them up.'

'It was an effective method, sort of.'

The jars around me I've made according to Apert's recipe,

including one that I have here, which I made 30 years ago.

They may not look too appetising but I'm sure if you ate them, They wouldn't poison you.

I don't think I can be bothered to eat them for you!

'Don't blame you, mate!'

'After 15 years of intensive research,

'Apert published a small bestseller,

'excitingly named The Art Of Preserving Animal And Vegetable Substances For Many Years.'

'His ideas fell into the hands of an Englishman called Peter Durand

'and you can guess what happened next.'

The tin can.

'Early tin cans though, were far too expensive for the masses.'

'And so their main market was the military

'and specialist expeditions of the age.'

'Although cans appeared in 1810,

'nobody actually invented a can opener for another 40 years!'

'But that wasn't the only problem.

'Canning didn't always work. Errgh!'

'It took another Frenchman, Louis Pasteur,

'to figure out exactly why it was our food went off.'

'In 1861, Pasteur showed

'that it was micro-organisms in food that made it go bad

'and that heating it to the right temperature killed them off.'

'Suddenly, canned food took off

'and one particular type was an instant success...'

Bully beef, a corned beef.

'In the First World War, bully beef was an essential ration for the troops.

'It kept the army alive.'

'As if the horrors of trench warfare weren't bad enough,

'the delightful canned meals just kept on coming.'

This is Maconochies,

normally beef and vegetables, or beans and pork.

They always called it the same thing, dog vomit.

'But whatever they called it, there was no stopping our love affair with tinned food.'

'Over the next century, mass production made canned food

'cheap enough for everyone... and the food industry went canning mad.'

Today they're making a traditional Scottish soup, Cock A Leekie.

Each vat, by the way, contains 100 gallons,

enough to fill 1,000 cans of soup.

'Now if you can eat it, or drink it, it's being sold in a tin.

'Thanks to canning, there's nothing that can't be preserved for years.'

'And you can always find something to eat in the back of the cupboard.'

-'Very canny that.'

-'Oh dear!'

'Back in the Best Of British kitchen, the veg for our piccalilli are ready

'and it's time to add our blend of spices.'

Now remember, in this cauldron of fire,

it's good we've got white wine vinegar.

Smell that! SIMON COUGHS

Oh, it's like mustard gas! It'll be all right!

Don't you worry at home, sitting, eating your tea. This will be great.

-Here we go. I think we should kick off on the heat.

-Yes, exactly that.

-Now you, see that's where the piccalilli gets its colour from, the turmeric.

-Yes.

Turmeric is a vicious colour. Keep it away from your marble tops!

Turmeric was probably first cultivated as a dye,

but then interestingly enough, it was often used as a replacement

to the more costly saffron in food because it gives it that sort of

lovely yellow tinge which you can seen in our piccalilli. Fabulous.

-It's beginning to smell like piccalilli, not mustard gas.

-Quite!

And you see the sauce has gone really, really thick now.

-The chilli flakes are clinging to those little bits of veg.

-Should we?

After you.

Just trace that over your gammon joint.

That...is gorgeous.

'But you can't eat it now. It needs to mature.

'Fill some sterilised jars with the piccalilli mixture.'

Lovely.

-It's lovely, that.

-Look how it's filling the jar up.

-That's handy.

-It looks so good, it could have been bought.

'Then put them in a cool, dark place for at least a month.'

-Oh, it's so worth it.

-Oh, it is. It's lovely, this.

-This is relish gold.

Imagine a smearing of this on your burger. It'd raise Lazarus, that.

'We've still got ham hocks waiting in the oven, though.'

Look at this.

'But luckily piccalilli is something

'you can always have tucked away in your cupboard...'

-Ahhh, yes!

-Look at them!

'..for just such an occasion.'

-You were made to be together. You and you.

-Fred and Ginger.

'Ham hocks and piccalilli might be the perfect couple

'but to make a meal of it

'we're inviting the potato salad to the party as well.'

-Now, shall we unleash the beast?

-Yeah, go on!

Ha-ha-ha-ha!

Look at that.

# Yeah, everybody

# Let's have some fun

# You only live but once... #

That is right good pickle.

I'll shut the lid just in case it escapes!

-I can't wait to taste this pickle.

-Go on, go on.

It's safe to approach.

# Let the good times roll! #

That piccalilli, it was a bit raw when we first made it.

But it has matured, settled down.

The lovely thing about it...

is that it's got a real sweet and sour to it

but also a lovely, but subtle, hit of chilli.

-Nice. Really good.

-It's not all mustard. Bit of ginger going on.

-It's quite a complex little thing.

-Absolutely wonderful.

-Yeah.

Preserving isn't simply about making food last longer.

Some methods of preserving food, you can take something quite simple

and make it very, very special.

The great thing is, with a ham hock, because the meat's so unctuous,

we have got all the combinations that your palate loves.

You've got a savoury note, a sweet note,

a sour note, and then a little bit of heat with the chilli.

-It's a perfect combo, man.

-Yeah.

'This is piccalilli for the 21st century.

'It's cheap to make and lasts for ages but, most importantly,

'it adds a huge depth of flavour to the right dish.'

Making vegetables last is one thing

but when it comes to meat, and especially fish,

there's a method of preserving that you just can't beat.

Smoking.

On the Suffolk coast there's a family business that knows

a thing or two about preserving fish.

Pinney's catch their own fish and seafood,

smoke it on site and even serve it up in their family restaurant.

Best-of-British-food hero Bill Pinney is the manager.

He's been smoking fish by hand since he was a boy.

The secret of his success is the blackened smokehouse

built around the back of the family home by Bill's dad.

What we do here is almost totally different to how salmon is smoked

in a factory nowadays.

There's no buttons you press here, no fans, no electricity involved.

It's the oak smoke and how the box is handled.

To produce the smoke at the right temperature,

you need to know how to handle the box.

You need to get smoke at the lower temperatures,

where the alcohols and ethers,

the sweet-smelling smoke in the wood, comes off.

And this method produces a smoked fish that is different

than you'll get anywhere else.

It's still an art, it's not an industrial process.

You can really taste the difference.

In the smokehouse the mackerel and trout are treated by a process

called hot smoking, during which the fish are cooked.

We've taken the lid off and opened up the air vent at the bottom.

The smoke is now being consumed as flames.

The hot smoking end then becomes in effect an oven,

so it'll only take ten or 15 minutes

and at the end of that time they're cooked and ready to eat.

The smoke boxes are fuelled by burning whole oak logs,

but not everything is hot-smoked here.

Some fish, like salmon, are coal-smoked,

which preserves the flavour of the fish without cooking it.

In these two bays we've got smoked salmon,

or salmon that's being smoked.

That has now been in there for about 12 hours

and it's probably going to be in there for possibly another 24.

It's quite soft at this stage and you can see by the touch that,

although the skin has dried off and you've got a bit of colour on there,

it's still got quite a long way to go.

# Come here, my little Jackie Now I've smoked me baccy

# Let's have a bit of cracky Till the boat comes in. #

Although nowadays people think of smoking for flavour,

it was originally a method of preserving fish

to make it last longer.

For generations along the east coast,

fleets of trawlers landed huge catches of herring

to be split in half and coal-smoked as kippers or left whole as bloaters.

The herring fleet was made up of ships from across Britain,

who followed the migration of the herring shoals

from Stornoway down to Great Yarmouth in the autumn.

It was accompanied by armies of women from the villages of Scotland,

who travelled down the coast

to work long and dirty hours skilfully gutting the herring.

Then the fish would be salted

and hung in the smoker for a long, long time.

And it would still be fit to eat eight months later.

Rather you than me, though, mate.

Sadly, the east coast herring industry is long gone,

but Billy's smoking another delicacy

that has been gathered in these waters since Roman times.

Oysters.

What we're doing at the moment is dredging for oysters.

The oysters lie loose on the sea bed or the river bed

and we're using a dredge which scoops the oysters off the bottom

and then catches them in a bag net.

And hopefully when I haul up we'll have a nice bagful of oysters.

The oyster beds at Butley Creek had fallen into disuse

in the early 1900s.

Bill's dad resurrected them by seeding them with fresh stock.

And Bill's still farming them today.

Nice bagful.

We've got some lovely oysters here for smoking.

Some of these are just perfect, lovely sized oysters.

These are a few years old now. These are actually the... Whoops!

That one's making a bid for freedom.

These are a Japanese type of oyster, a Pacific oyster.

They grew originally in Japan but they've been brought over to Europe.

And 90% of the European production is made up from this type of oyster.

Ah, man, I love oysters.

They're little bundles of loveliness.

In fact, at Bill's family restaurant they've got a great recipe

that'll tango on your taste buds.

First up, the oysters have to be smoked for a couple of hours.

Then it's over to the restaurant in Orford, where daughter Jodie

takes the oysters and turns them into angels on horseback.

It's really simple.

Add a pinch of parsley and chopped onion to some bacon

and wrap it around the delicious oyster.

The oysters have only been smoked for a couple of hours

so they're not too overpowering and they have a delicate sweet flavour,

so once they're grilled they'll be delicious.

When I was a child Mum and Dad always tried to get me

to eat oysters but I wasn't having any of it,

so the only way they could do it

was to try and, well, sneak them in by cooking them in a bit of bacon.

Yeah, that's how I got into eating oysters.

After eight minutes under the grill, they're ready to pop on a bit of toast.

Top nosh.

We're one of the very few places that actually grow our own oysters,

catch our own fish, smoke our own fish

and serve it in our own restaurant.

Traditional smoked seafood made the family way.

-It's authentic and it's as good as it gets.

-Aye, just like us.

In Britain we've traditionally employed

an array of preserving methods

to ensure we've eaten well all year round.

What could be more quintessentially British than marmalade?

As well as being a classic preserve, marmalade is big business.

We spend around £60 million a year on it in Britain,

eating our way through 30 million litres' worth.

To find out more about the origins of the marmalade we know and love today, we're off to Dundee.

Dundee is legendary as the birthplace of marmalade

but, as with many legends, there's more than a bit of myth involved.

The story goes that in the 18th century a Spanish ship

containing Seville oranges was forced into port during a storm.

The fruit ended up with a local sweetmaker called Janet Keiller,

who chopped them up and turned them into a kind of orange jam.

It was called marmalade

and the name of Keiller's was made famous all over the world.

Well, that's the story,

but to find out the truth we've come to the McManus Museum

to meet the curator of social history, Rhona Rodger.

What's the story?

Yes, well, there's a few myths surrounding marmalade in Dundee.

Keiller's, although they didn't invent Dundee marmalade,

-they produced what we now know today as marmalade.

-Right.

So they took old recipes that would have been available at the time

and changed it into what was more sort of a jam-based consistency

and added the chips, as they're called, the peel.

What would marmalade have been before it was marmalade

and Keiller's took it and...made it into something.

-What would it have been?

-Well, before, in the 1700s and things,

there were recipes for marmalade, erm...

but it would have been a more... it would have been a dessert.

The dessert was based on a Portuguese delicacy called marmelada.

It was a kind of cake made from quince.

This ancient preserve goes back a long way.

Henry VIII was given it as a gift in the 1500s but over time it evolved

and by the 18th century in Scotland they were making it using oranges.

When Keiller's turned it into something you could spread on your toast,

it became a bestseller.

They were the largest confectioners in Britain

and marmalade became probably their main product

and Scottish people stopped having it as a dessert and they liked

to have it, this warming, sort of tangy flavour, for their breakfasts.

It was cheaper than butter, so it was available to everyone,

and then it sort of spread out across the Empire

and across the world.

So it was exported to the whole of Asia, Australasia,

there was a big export business to New Zealand,

where there were a lot of Scottish people.

This huge marmalade empire relied on Seville oranges from Spain.

They were once the only orange available in Europe.

Their bitter and sour taste was perfect for marmalade

but meant that they weren't much use for anything else.

And Keiller's were producing marmalade by the bucketload.

Where did they store it? Because clearly it's a huge, huge industry.

Yes, well, when they made it they would just put it in its pot

straight from being hot and it was, erm,

a woman's job then to come along and cover all the pots.

Originally they were covered with bladder

and then it went on to be covered with a parchment paper

and tied, so that's why we have no surviving lids.

And the pots came from Newcastle, so...

-Was that from Maling, from the Maling Pottery?

-Yes, it was.

And they used about 1.5 million of those pots a year.

What's the significance of the cricket bat?

Well, this is a jam stirrer that would have been used...

Someone would have stood and constantly stirred the marmalade and the jams

in the big copper pans that the jam and marmalade was made in.

This is the preserves department, where they make jams and marmalade.

Today it's marmalade.

Marmalade production was seasonal, running from December to around March.

Once it was over, the factories would switch their processes to making jam.

This girl's job is to keep feeding empty jars onto the conveyor line. The jars are automatically filled.

By the 20th century, marmalade was an essential food on breakfast tables everywhere.

Famously the favourite preserve of British icons like Paddington Bear

and Winston Churchill.

This magnifying screen lets you see

if there's any burnt peel or foreign bodies in the marmalade.

Keiller was bought out in the 1900s, but marmalade has

continued to be made in the Dundee area right up to the present date.

Mackays are the last producer of Dundee's iconic marmalade.

It's a family run business and we have come to meet managing director Martin Grant.

-Welcome to Mackays.

-Hello, Martin.

-Very nice to meet you, sir.

Good to meet you. Come on through. Last pours are about to start.

Brilliant. We will follow you.

The company makes its marmalade the traditional way,

so we are going to see how it is done.

Making marmalade at home might be a bit of a peaceful process,

but producing it on an industrial scale, well, it is a bit noisy.

These are the vats that you pour the marmalade mixture in?

Yes, this is the original style, so this is as close to home-made as you'll get in a commercial world.

Their marmalade is made in a series of small vats rather than a single large one,

which allows them to control the cooking more easily.

The copper bottomed vats are steam heated, which gives a constant

temperature to allow the flavours to cook slowly and intensely.

It does not take long to make a jar of marmalade.

First off, you need to add liquid cane sugar.

Then comes the orange pulp.

Depending on what time of year the marmalade is being made,

you might need to add more pectin.

This is the substance in the oranges that makes the marmalade thicken.

How much extra you need depends on when the oranges were good.

You want to make sure the marmalade is the same

whether it be January or December, all the way through.

You have to moderate the pectin levels,

so early crop fruits is really, really high in pectin, so we use less.

At the end of the season, it is really low in pectin,

so we have to add it to get it to set.

That is how we have to do it.

So we change depending on how old the fruit is.

When it starts to boil, the mixture is stirred with a paddle.

Then it is boiled vigorously for a full 18 minutes.

It boils up like molten lava.

So you certainly wouldn't want to do this at home.

That vat there, with the steam going,

it is like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

Martin believes cooking marmalade slowly for 18 minutes gives a better flavour.

Larger manufacturers cook theirs in pressure cookers for just three minutes.

Just degrades the quality of the fruit, the flavour and the taste.

But the trick with this is knowing when to shut it off.

To make sure the marmalade is reaching the right consistency,

its thickness is tested. If it boils for too long,

it'll taste like burnt candy floss.

What do you reckon?

-It's perfect.

-Perfect. See, the lass from Mackays, she says yes.

Once it's cooled a bit, it's ready to go,

though sometimes you might want to add a little bit of something extra.

-They must trust you.

-Just.

-They've got to, he's signed a pledge.

That is amazing.

It is good to know, though, when you treat yourself to a nice,

posh jar of marmalade, with a bit of the good stuff in,

this is the good stuff that's going in.

-All that, seven bottles.

-Seven bottles?

It is getting better all the time! Fantastic!

-That is another good product. It is good here, isn't it?

-It is.

It is interesting.

-Here we are, guys.

-Great.

-Heaven.

-Toasted by you guys today. Well...

Now the best bit - marmalade tasting.

It is the most wonderful, great,

traditional pleasures in life, isn't it? Toast and marmalade.

The story of the product is from the kitchen,

so we have tried to keep as close to that as possible.

It's cooked in the old-fashioned way and we do not muck about with it,

nothing else goes into that product.

It is great ingredients, not messed about with, equals a brilliant product,

and that in essence is the best of British, isn't it?

It is very heart-warming to know that the marmalade traditions

and industry is alive and well in the north-east of Scotland.

It is a preserve that can bring sunshine to a winter's day, can't it?

-Absolutely.

-That is the idea of preserving.

-Absolutely.

You have your oranges, it's one thing eating them in the sun,

you can have a little bit of it every day.

Jams and marmalade aren't the only useful way

of preserving citrussy fruit.

We're going to make some deliciously British lemon curd.

And then we are going to bring a bit of excitement to some lemon and blueberry muffins.

I'm going to make the lemon curd and I'm just going to make

a couple of jars of it and keep that for my tea.

With the leftovers, Mr King is going to apply them to make

the most delicious blueberry and lemon muffins you have ever tasted.

Our lemon curd is basically made using a combination of eggs

and lemons cooked over simmering water.

To start with, you need four whole eggs, then four egg yolks.

While Dave's doing that,

I am going to start melting 100 grams of butter for the muffins.

These are American muffins,

which basically is a puffed-up fairy cake in my eyes,

and muffins should be English, soft and doughy.

In the 19th century, we used to have muffin men that wandered round the streets.

But somebody moaned and complained that the bell was too loud

because that's how they used to tell the muffin man was in the street.

Then there was a decree from the government to say, "Excuse me, muffin man, stop ringing your bell."

-Some people moan about everything!

-Don't they?!

Beat the egg mixture together with a whisk

and grate in the zest of three lemons.

While Dave's zesting his lemons, I'm putting in some self-raising flour

and sifting it into a bowl with a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda.

There is part of the history of lemons that is quite sad.

Christopher Columbus,

he established a settlement on Haiti and they were growing lemons,

and lemons started coming backwards and forwards from the New World.

Sailors all over the place were dying of scurvy.

The ships were full of lemons and nobody realised that

if they had eaten the lemons, they wouldn't die.

'Mix two whole eggs together...'

One.

'..then add two tablespoons of milk and 150mls of yoghurt,

'and whisk until it is really smooth.'

Then I've melted some butter in a pan and we add that as well.

Once that's done,

you're ready to add 100 grams of caster sugar to the flour

with 100 grams of blueberries.

-Do you want a lemon, mate?

-Go on, mate.

-Incoming.

And the zest of a lemon.

Mix all the dry goods together and just make sure that you get

all of those blueberries evenly distributed in the flour.

If you don't, somebody will feel cheated when they eat the muffin.

Pour the eggy mixture into the flour and blueberry mix. Look at that.

Lovely, silky, smooth.

Now, combine the wet with the dry to make the cake mix.

Now for the curd.

We need the juice of six lemons...

Funny thing is, you call lemon curd a preserve.

It is really, but it was never as popular as jam

because jam always kept better than lemon curd.

Pour this lemon juice into the eggs with the zest.

Yes, it really does need all that lemon juice.

Then add 100 grams caster sugar and the same amount of butter.

This is where the fun starts.

We mustn't put that bowl into direct contact with the boiling water,

or else our lemon curd will become lemon curdle.

But as it goes, the sugar will melt, the butter will melt,

the eggs will cook and I will end up, with a bit of luck,

with a bowl of lovely, glossy, lemony lemon curd.

I just stand here like a lemon stirring this

until magic happens in the pan.

Our muffin mix is ready to go in its cases.

I find an ice cream scoop works quite well for this.

With the back of a spoon, I'm going to make a little well

in the top of our muffins to take a teaspoon of this lovely lemon curd.

The lemon curd is going to sit on the top with a sugary crust,

so that when you bite into the muffin you get this lemon burst that

tickles your tonsils.

Wait until the muffins are cold,

because you may get a mouthful of lemon napalm.

For the lemon curd, it is a waiting game.

Stir it for five minutes until the butter has melted

and it has started to thicken.

-How is the curd going, mate?

-As you can see, it is beginning to thicken.

At this point, use a whisk to stir the curd continuously

for about 12 minutes until it's the consistency of custard.

It is going. Do you want a grab a spoon, see what this is like when it cools? I think I might be there.

You can tell it is ready when it clings to a cold spoon like this.

Upside down, that is what you want from your lemon curd.

Off we go, Mr King.

So, just on the top, one little teaspoon of lemon curd, like that.

This is perfect.

It is probably a bit zingier then the commercial lemon curd,

which for these muffins is perfect.

It is just when you want a sharp hit on the top.

Finally, sprinkle some granulated sugar on the top of the muffins

and they're ready for the oven.

190 degrees, depending on your oven, for 20 minutes.

That's Celsius, not Fahrenheit. I'd better bottle up my lemon curd.

That would be a shame not to.

A great present, isn't it, this? Again, we've sterilised these jars.

A little bit of greaseproof on the top, like that.

And that will do us for a good couple of cream teas.

-Oh, yes! Lovely.

-Look at the sugar, it's caramelised on the top.

There is a temptation to put them straight into your mush, but don't.

Remember to let them cool down properly before you do.

Look at that.

-It's all sticky on the outside.

-Look at that.

It's like mining for coal, that. Oh, they're springy. Lovely.

It's really good, isn't it? I want to taste the top.

-What is it like?

-Super lemony.

The thing about preserving is by preserving something

you change the nature of it and, in a funny sort of way,

you always seem to give whatever you're preserving more flavour.

You can liven up something plain.

A simple muffin, lemon curd on the top - it's a bit special.

Our muffins are great to have with a brew.

The lemon tanginess adds a real zest to your afternoon tea.

Lemon curd is something you can use with cakes, tarts, toast or scones.

Marvellous!

Preserving has been a great British tradition for centuries.

In the past, it provided a livelihood for thousands of people

and has given us some of our most distinctive foods.

And the quest to make our food last longer has led to some huge advances in science.

But in this age when we can get fresh produce all year round

we no longer preserve out of necessity...

We do it for the sheer love of the flavours and textures it brings

to our dinner plate and long may it continue, because it is fabulous!

And to find out how to cook the recipes in today show,

visit -

to discover some amazing facts about the history of food.

And to find out how to cook up tonight's recipes.

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