Modern Hill Woman

Jam 101

I have made a lot of jam this summer. Jam is a staple on today’s breakfast table, but years ago it was much different than today’s sweet deliciousness.

The first recorded recipe for jam (quince mashed in honey) was written around the 4th century in the Middle East. Honey was cheap, easy to find, and a common means of preservation. While honey could be used to sweeten and preserve fruit, eventually sugar became the sweetener of choice.

Sugar cane was domesticated in Southeast Asia and was eventually grown in Persia, where the Crusaders discovered it and brought it to England. Regular people couldn’t afford it, however. The cost was around $50 per pound (today’s cost).

Sugar was rare and expensive so jam was a status symbol of the wealthy.

King Louis XIV served his luxury jam to guests at the palace at Versailles, made from fruits grown in his private garden. Queen Victoria was another jam-loving royal. Her favorite was said to be lavender. I made lavender jam once. It tasted like cleaner to me.

Besides being a sweet treat, jam has served as a digestive aid, energy-giving snack, and love potion.

Nostradamus penned a recipe for “Love Jam.” He wrote that if eaten by a woman it would induce “a burning of her heart to perform the love act.”

The ingredients included mandrake apples, gratings from several minerals, and the blood of seven male sparrows.

Marie Curie was a jam maker. The summer of 1898, during which she discovered polonium, she also put up a batch of gooseberries. According to her household account books she used eight pounds of berries and eight pounds of sugar to make 14 pots of jam.

Jam is chunky and made from juice and chopped or whole fruit. Jelly is made from juice only and is translucent. Marmalade is made from the fruit and peels of citrus fruit. All, however, rely on the same chemistry, a balance of fruit, sugar, acid, and pectin. When the formula is followed correctly the end result induces the nostalgia of childhood; jam and butter on a slice of bread.