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As a young Portuguese-Canadian, I was surprised to find out that most "marmalades" in Canada weren't made of quince.

In Portugal, "marmalade" was made of quince, period. The other things were probably called jellies or jams.

I've come full circle on it, as you can buy the original Portuguese marmalade in Canada now.

https://www.realcanadiansuperstore.ca/quince-jam/p/20159955_...

The Portuguese word for 'quince' is 'marmelo,' which is where the word marmalade comes from.

Funnily in Russian "мармелад" means something completely different, basically hard jelly candies (think jelly worm hardness), typically coated in caster sugar.
If I recall correctly the Portuguese term was the original etymology of all the "marmalades" in other languages. The French changed the meaning of the world by extension from "quince cheese" to "citrus preserve", and then every other languages just took the French meaning.

For instance, in Italian _legally_ "marmellata" should be applied only to citrus preserves, but in common usage it came to be used to refer to every kind of jam (the correct term being "confettura", which is rarely used).

In German if I recall correctly "Marmelade" just means "jam".

"Quince Cheese" sounds awesome :-)
It's the proper English term to refer to what Portuguese call "marmelada". Yeah English is funny sometimes.
We make (very small quantities) of marmalade from our Poncirus Trifoliata (https://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFin...) tree. This grows in the US in Zone 5/6.

The fruit is very bitter, and this gives the marmalade a wonderful wake-you-up sharpness.

Would you be able to share your recipe? I've seen many variants on the net. Using ripe/full yellow fruits I did many soaks in water, boiled the fruits and even the boiling juice had to be discarded due to bitterness. After that process I added sugar and a couple oranges and ended up with an acceptable bitterness, but the flavor is still very sharp. One of the recipe on the net talked about harvesting fruits when they still have shades of green and are not fully ripe. Maybe that's a way to prevent too much bitterness? I also did not remove the skin and I hear it's where most of the bitterness is.
I never tried British marmalade, however I love our similar products such as peach or orange jams; sadly there's no way to make a sugar-less one.

By the way, the word marmalade brings memories of my English teacher at school telling us how the three "a" in that word were pronounced each one in a different way.

I don't like store bought (orange)marmalades, at least in my country, they are congealed orange-coloured-but-barely-orange-tasting jams with random bits of peel floating at the top

However, my mum made it once, and I still remember it fondly, it was warm and syrupy and sticky and tasty, and it was perfect.

But we never made it again, it's such a god damn hassle.

Same with Ketchup, we made it a couple of times and it was amazing, but man, do these things take a lot of time and fiddling. Much easier to just buy off the shelf.

As my mother grows old and our generation has less time for dishes that take more than ~2 hours, I feel some of the charm has been leaving. We don't buy marmalade now, even though it's readily available.

Not all store bought ketchup is created equal, through trial and error I've found a few better store brands, some of which I've forgotten the name of. Sir Kensingtons > Heinz
>Marmalade: A very British obsession

I don't think it is. I've lost count of the number of times I've asked for marmalade to go with my toast and been told sorry we don't have any.

You're more likely to find Marmite in a British cupboard.

I have some Marmalade, but used it once about 2 years ago.

Portuguese marmelada and British marmelade are so different.

Marmelada has a texture similar to a grainy pate and it is very sweet.

I'm British and I hate marmalade! Marmite ftw!
Hah! All true Britons love marmalade :-)
I'm only half Briton !