Mixed peel substitutes

Single-citrus candied peel, sold either diced or in long strips.

Best for

hot cross buns, Christmas cake, simnel cake, stollen, panettone, mincemeat, Eccles cakes

Prep

Chop strips to a 3 to 5mm dice. If the peel is very dry and hard, steam it briefly or soak it in a spoonful of hot water or orange juice for ten minutes and drain.

This is effectively the same ingredient with one of the citrus fruits missing, so nothing about the recipe changes. Candied orange peel alone is rounder, sweeter and more perfumed than a mix, and you lose the sharper, slightly floral high note that lemon peel provides, which in a hot cross bun is a real if subtle loss. Combining orange and lemon peel half and half is indistinguishable from shop-bought mixed peel in most bakes. If you buy strips rather than dice, chop them small yourself, which is usually the better buy anyway because strip peel tends to be moister and much less bitter than the tiny hard cubes in a tub.

Finely grated fresh orange and lemon rind, with sultanas or chopped apricots to replace the bulk.

Best for

hot cross buns, fruit cake, simnel cake, bread pudding, scones

Prep

Rub the zest into the sugar with your fingertips before mixing, which pulls the oils out and spreads the flavour right through the dough.

The best answer when you have no candied fruit in the house, and it makes a lot of people's Christmas cake better rather than worse. The zest carries the aromatic citrus oils, which is the part of mixed peel that actually does the flavouring work, and it delivers them fresher and brighter than candied peel does. Two things go missing. There is no bitterness, because candied peel keeps a faint pith bitterness that gives fruit cake its grown-up edge, and there is no chew, which is why the dried fruit matters; leave the bulk out and a bun dough will be short of fruit and the texture will change. Grate on a microplane and take only the coloured layer.

A set citrus preserve containing shreds of candied orange rind in bittersweet jelly.

Best for

Christmas cake, hot cross buns, bread and butter pudding, mincemeat, glazes

Prep

Stir it into the wet ingredients rather than the dry, so it disperses instead of forming sweet pockets.

The closest flavour match of all the swaps, because a proper Seville marmalade has exactly the bittersweet orange character that mixed peel is meant to bring, and thick-cut marmalade even provides shreds of rind. What changes is where the flavour sits: instead of biting into distinct chewy nuggets, the citrus is dispersed through the whole crumb, so the bake tastes more evenly and more strongly of orange. It also brings sugar and water, so reduce the recipe's liquid by a tablespoon for each tablespoon of marmalade and take out a teaspoon of sugar. Avoid sweet breakfast marmalades made with sweet oranges, which have none of the bitterness.

Citrus rind blanched to remove bitterness, then simmered in sugar syrup and dried.

Best for

Christmas cake, simnel cake, panettone, when shop peel tastes bitter or plasticky, batch baking

Prep

Once dry, chop to a small dice. Toss in a little caster sugar if the pieces are sticking together.

Worth doing once, because homemade peel is genuinely better than the tubs of hard dice, tasting fragrant and gently bitter rather than sharply chemical. Peel two oranges and a lemon in wide strips, taking a little of the white pith with them, and boil the strips in fresh water three times, five minutes each time with a change of water, which is what removes the harsh bitterness. Then simmer them in equal weights of sugar and water for around 45 minutes until translucent, drain, and dry on a rack for a few hours. Choose unwaxed fruit and scrub it first. Store it in an airtight jar in the fridge, where it keeps for weeks.

Other candied fruits made by the same heavy-syrup process.

Best for

panettone, fruit cake, stollen, mincemeat

Prep

Chop to a small dice and add orange zest alongside.

Structurally identical, so the recipe behaves exactly as written, and both are traditional in continental Christmas baking. Candied citron is the closest of the two, being a citrus peel itself, though it is milder, more perfumed and less bitter than orange peel; it is also often part of commercial mixed peel already. Candied pineapple is sweeter and faintly tropical, which reads slightly oddly in a simnel or hot cross bun but works well enough in a dark fruit cake. With either, add the grated zest of an orange to put back the citrus lift they lack.

Standard dried fruits with soft chew and concentrated sweetness.

Best for

hot cross buns, fruit scones, bread pudding, rock buns

Prep

Chop apricots to a small dice, and add citrus zest to the dough alongside them.

The honest position on this one is that it keeps the recipe working but abandons the flavour. Weight for weight it is the right bulk, the right chew and roughly the right sweetness, so a bun dough or a fruit cake will rise and bake exactly as it should. But it is the citrus, and specifically the faint bitterness behind the citrus, that makes a hot cross bun taste like a hot cross bun rather than a currant bun. Dried apricots are the best of the three because they at least bring some tartness. If you go this route, always add the grated zest of an orange and a lemon as well, which costs nothing and closes most of the gap.