Cooking with the seasons: Seville oranges

Following the mighty Guadalquivir inland from Sanlúcar de Barrameda leads you to the greatest of Spain’s Moorish cities, Seville. This ancient capital of Andalucía is home to the world’s largest gothic cathedral and the delicate filigree of the Alcázar royal palace: an extraordinary, ravishing city where incense rises to meet the aroma of its saffron-tinged Arabic past. It’s a place of “sweet wines and bitter oranges”, as Laurie Lee noted in his hymn to the Spanish south, A Rose for Winter. And it’s the fragrant orange trees lining the cobbled streets, overripe windfalls baking in the sun at their feet, that provide the most mysterious and alluring of Seville’s many perfumes.