All Things Jammy

"God save strawberry jam and all the different varieties." - The Kinks

The French consume more jam than any other European country (8.8 kilos per person in 2019), the UK came in third for total consumption although lower when values were adjusted by population. 

The ancient Greeks used honey to preserve fruits. A Roman recipe is commonly considered the first written recipe for jam, in the world's first cookbook (De Re Coquinaria - The Art of Cooking), made with quinces, honey and fresh wine. In the 16th Century Nostradamus wrote a lot about jams, and made them in his spare time. His recipe for a 'love jam', assured to cause a "burning desire to perform the love act", includes the blood of seven male sparrows, bled from the left wing.

Marmelade was supposedly created by a physician to Mary Queen of Scots to help her get over sea sickness. The word is even suggested to have come from the phrase Marie est malade (Mary is sick) however it is more likely to have come from 'marmelo', the Portuguese word for Quince.  

Napoleon Bonaparte furthered food preservation efforts by offering a reward to anyone who could find a safe and reliable method to preserve food for his army. Nicolas Appert invented airtight food preservation using heat to sterilise the cans and jars that the food was stored in. Over 10 years of experiments he discovered that foods had to be heated at different temperature for different times according to the amount of acid in the food. Sadly he never received the prize money from Bonaparte and never found success in business, dying in poverty at the age of 91. 

When sugar prices soared in the late 1970's, High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) became a popular replacement for sugar. Lots of debate exists about whether HFCS is more unhealthy than regular sugar. Sugar is made of sucrose, a disaccharide composed of equal amounts of fructose and glucose, HFCS contains a combination of glucose and fructose which normally contain 42% or 55% fructose. However, some HFCS contains as high as 90% fructose, the consumption of high amounts of fructose has been associated with insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome and obesity, however fruit is not considered dangerous because of the additional fibre and nutrients the give to the body. 

How does Bob Marley like his donuts?

Wih jam in.