Recipe: Keep-it-Secret Marmalade (Cucumber Marmalade)

Keep-it-Secret Marmalade (Cucumber Marmalade)
rec.food.recipes/Jason Bailes/1997
Source: Old Mobile Magazine
Makes about five jelly glasses.

Every household in old Mobile had a few recipes which were handed down with admonitions not to give everybody the directions. If one wished to have a good idea of the exact ingredients and the true cooking method for some dish, one had to talk to three ladies of the same family on the same day, before they could decide how to edit the recipe before passing it on. Here's a delicious marmalade nobody could ever quite figure out. The lady who made it, unmarried, childless, on her deathbed wrote it out for her faithful grocery delivery boy who not only brought her groceries but mailed letters, picked up the newspapers, all that. This mystery marmalade is equally good on hot biscuits, muffins, and pones, even on top of frozen buttermilk as dessert.

2 cups finely-chopped cucumbers
4 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup of lime juice (or lemon, but lime's better)
2 Tbsp. grated lime peel (if necessary, lemon will serve)
1/2 bottle liquid fruit pectin
whatever coloring you fancy: beet juice, blueberry juice.

In big saucepan combine cucumbers, sugar, juice and peel. Mix well, add coloring, boil one minute over high heat, stirring constantly. Remove from stove, stir in pectin. Skim off foam, stir and skim 5 minutes to cool a bit. Pour into sterilized jars and seal. Process in water bath canner for 10 minutes.