marmalade

Not to be confused with Marmelade, a town in Haiti.
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Marmalade is a fruit preserve, made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits, boiled with sugar and water. The traditional citrus fruit for marmalade production is the "Seville orange" from Spain, Citrus aurantium var. aurantium, thus called because it was originally only grown in Seville in Spain; it is higher in pectin than sweet oranges, and therefore gives a good set. The peel has a distinctive bitter taste which it imparts to the marmalade. Marmalade can be made from lemons, limes, grapefruits, sweet oranges or any combination thereof. For example, California-style marmalade is made from the peel of sweet oranges and consequently lacks the bitter taste of Seville orange marmalade.

In languages other than English, “marmalade” can mean preserves made with fruit other than citrus.[1] For example, in Spanish all preserves are known generically as “mermelada” (there is no distinction made between jam, jelly, preserves or marmalade), and in Portuguese ”marmelada” applies chiefly to quince marmalade (from ”marmelo”, quince).

The recipe for marmalade includes sliced or chopped fruit peel simmered in sugar, fruit juice and water until soft; indeed marmalade is sometimes described as jam with fruit peel (although manufacturers also produce peel-free marmalade). Marmalade is often eaten on toast for breakfast.

Contents

Origins

The Romans learned from the Greeks that quinces slowly cooked with honey would "set" when cool (though they did not know about fruit pectin). Greek μελίμηλον melimēlon or "honey fruit"—for most quinces are too astringent to be used without honey, and in Greek μῆλον mēlon or "apple" stands for all globular fruits—was transformed into "marmelo." A Roman cookbook attributed to Apicius gives a recipe for preserving whole quinces, stems and leaves attached, in a bath of honey diluted with defrutum—Roman marmalade. Preserves of quince and lemon appear—along with rose, apple, plum and pear—in the Book of ceremonies of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, "a book that is not only a treatise on the etiquette of imperial banquetting in the ninth century, but a catalogue of the foods available and dishes made from them."[2]

Medieval quince preserves, which went by the French name cotignac, produced in a clear version and a fruit pulp version, began to lose their medieval seasoning of spices in the 16th century. In the 17th century La Varenne provided recipes for both thick and clear cotignac.[3]

The extension of "marmalade" in the English language to refer to citrus fruits was made in the 17th century, when citrus first began to be plentiful enough in England for the usage to become common.

In some continental Europe languages[which?], a word sharing a root with "marmalade" refers to all gelled fruit conserves, and those derived from citrus fruits merit no special word of their own. Due to British influence, however, only citrus products may be sold as "marmalade" in the European Union (with certain exceptions[clarification needed]), which has led to considerable complaints from those countries.

In Portugal, where the modern use of the word originated, "marmelada" refers only to a solid gel-like substance made of quinces. Any other use of the word is considered improper both linguistically and technically.

Etymology

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "marmalade" appeared in English language in 1480, borrowed from French marmelade which, in turn, came from the Portuguese marmelada. According to José Pedro Machado’s Dicionário Etimológico da Língua Portuguesa,[4] the oldest known document where this Portuguese word is to be found is Gil Vicente’s play Comédia de Rubena, written in 1521:

Temos tanta marmelada
Que minha mãe vai me dar um pouco[5]

In Portuguese, according to the root of the word, which is marmelo, "quince", marmelada is a preserve made from quinces, quince cheese. Marmelo in turn derives from Latin melimelum, “honey apple”,[6] which in turn comes from the earlier Greek μελίμηλον (melímēlon),[7] from "μέλι" (meli), "honey"[8] + "μήλον" (mēlon), "apple".[9]

There is no truth to a folk etymology that claims the word derives from "Ma'am est malade" (French for "Madam is ill"), referring to Mary, Queen of Scots, because she used it as a medicine for a headache or upset stomach—or that during a bout of seasickness when sailing from France to Scotland, she turned to the sugary substance made of quinces by her French chef to ease her queasiness. (See on-line marmalade recipes). A similar folk etymology is based on Marie Antoinette.

In 1524, Henry VIII received a "box of marmalade" from Mr. Hull of Exeter.[10] As it was in a box, this was likely to have been marmelada, a quince paste from Portugal , still made and sold in southern Europe. Its Portuguese origins from marmalado can be detected in the remarks in letters to Lord Lisle, from William Grett, 12 May 1534, "I have sent to your lordship a box of marmaladoo, and another unto my good lady your wife" and from Richard Lee, 14 December 1536, "He most heartily thanketh her Ladyship for her marmalado".[11]

Dundee Marmalade

The Scottish city of Dundee[12] has a long association with marmalade.[13] In 1797,[1] James Keiller[14] and his mother Janet ran a small sweet and preserves shop in the Seagate section of Dundee; they opened a factory to produce "Dundee Marmalade", that is marmalade containing thick chunks of Seville orange rind.[15] Some claim this preparation as a new twist by Keiller on the already well-known fruit preserve of quince marmalade.[16] Others see the Keiller claims as canny commercial promotion, backed up by such references as "My wife has made marmalade of oranges for you" in James Boswell's letter to Dr. Johnson of April 24, 1777.

The British gardener and TV presenter Monty Don is a great X 2 grandson of Janet Keiller.[17]

Classical Meisterfloetist and American cryptology pioneer Lambros D. Callimahos was a great lover of Dundee marmalade. Students in the National Security Agency training course CA-400, an extremely detailed course on the history and usage of cryptology and cryptanalysis developed and taught by Callimahos from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, were inducted into the "Dundee Society" and were presented with Dundee ceramic jars upon completion of the course. The group's name came about when Callimahos, who used an empty Dundee jar as a pencil caddy on his desk, used the name "Dundee" to schedule a luncheon for course graduates at the Ft. Meade Officers' Club in place of either the course name or the agency's name (neither of which could be used for security purposes). When Dundee switched to using glass jars, Callimahos used the ceramic jars only for the initial course completion ceremony, then collected them back again to preserve them for future course graduates and suggested students seek out their own Dundee jars.[18]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ a b dish, Marmalade
  2. ↑ Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, (Anthea Bell, tr.) A History of Food 2nd ed. 2009, p. 507
  3. ↑ C. Anne Wilson, The Book of Marmalade: its Antecedents, Its History, and Its Role in the World Today, revised ed., 1999, p.
  4. ↑ "Etymological Dictionary of the Portuguese Language"
  5. ↑ Translation: We have so much quince jelly/ That my mother will give me some. Maria João Amaral, ed. Gil Vicente, Rubena (Lisbon:Quimera) 1961 (e-book)
  6. ↑ Klein’s Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language
  7. ↑ Melimelon, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
  8. ↑ μέλι, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
  9. ↑ μήλον, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
  10. ↑ Public Record Office, Letters and Papers, Foreign & Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, vol. VI (1870) p.339, noted by Wilson 1999, p. 31f, and by other writers.
  11. ↑ Quoted in Wilson, p. 32.
  12. ↑ The British Food Trust
  13. ↑ Dundee Marmalade
  14. ↑
  15. ↑ Orange Marmalade
  16. ↑ W.M. Matthew, The Keiller Dynasty 1800-1879 narrates the history of Keillers; BBC News "Legacies: Keiller's: Sticky Success": offers an abbreviated version.
  17. ↑ Life of Johnson - Vol II (1791)
  18. ↑ Mowry, David P. (2003-02-28). . Center for Cryptologic History. http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/crypto_almanac_50th/Lambros_D._Callimahos_Part_2_djpaul.pdf. Retrieved 2010-10-28.