Found the missing birthday presents, so I get to compare the Dundee and the Chivers ginger marmalade head-to-head. The Dundee was what we used for decades, before we stopped keeping such things around (stopped doing biscuit breakfasts, I guess).
The Chivers is a bit lighter in shade and seems to have less solid ginger in it. The flavor is rounder and mellower, and has essentially no trace of “sharp” to it.
The Dundee is not as good as I remember it being. Memory of flavors over decades are not reliable, and people mostly lose taste sensitivity as they get older, so this doesn’t really prove a change in the marmalade, however. Still, I prefer it to the Chivers. Unfortunately it seems to be hard to get; Lydy had to buy a batch of six jars to get it from Amazon (so it’s a good thing I still like it).
(Incidentally, I’ve now received well over a dozen jars of preserves from Amazon in many separate orders, not not one single jar got broken. I’m sure some do, but it appears to be pretty rare.)
One reason I’m buying these things from Amazon is that it’s much harder to find them in stores locally than it used to be, both regular grocery stores and specialty shops.
(The Frank Cooper vintage orange is present because it was one of the missing birthday presents that was finally turned up.)