It’s said that the orange marmelade was invented for Caterina of Aragogna that had married Enrico VIII king of England and she couldn’t enjoy the fruits of her land. Really the origin of marmalade plus ancien. The roman cookbook attributed to Apicius said that the Greeks cooked the quinces with honey in order to preserve this fruits.

The Romans used to immerse the whole fruit in raisin wine, cooked wine, must or honey. Greeks and Romans used honey or wine as (like) natural sweetening because the sugar was introduce in European market only in crusades times. The marmalades were born to eat the fruit when the fresh fruit is not available.

A lot of documents attest that during the Middle Ages the jam was produced using a technical similar to the actual method of jam production. In this ages it’s also used to candy fruit and vegetable, but only the richest family could taste this precious aliments.

In the modern language we use indifferently the term marmalade and jam but it’s not correct. In fact marmalade are not synonymous with jam and this difference is establish to European directive.

Published 01 March 2017