SC - Re: Jams not period???

[Philip & Susan Troy]

> Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 22:03:45 EDT
> From: RuddR at aol.com
> Subject: Re: Jams not period??? (was SC - Mulberry question)
> 
>  > so... should I cease serving preserves, break my heart though it would?
>   
> 
> I find in _The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened_ (1669) receipts for "Jelly
> of Currants" and "Marmulate of Cherries" at least (This is only a quick
> glance).  These seem to be straight-up fruit preserves, little different from
> your father's prizewinning varieties.

I guess the real issue here is the efficacy of the preservative process.
Jams, jellies, and what we call preserves today, are usually sealed up
in preserving jars of some kind, or cans, or what have you. This is
necessary to avoid molds and other decay. One possible solution that
seems to have been employed in later period (and after) is some kind of
vessel (maybe a ceramic jar) topped with a brandy-soaked disk of
parchment, and covered with melted lard or beeswax. More commonly, in
period, fruits were preserved in sweet, spiced syrups of wine and sugar
or honey, or in the form of solid marmalades. The former method is found
in sources from Apicius on up, and the latter is found in, at the very
least, several of the 14th-century sources. The problem with accepting
Digby as a source typical of even late period for SCA purposes is his
date, even when you take into account the fact that his book was
published posthumously, and shave as many as ten years off 1669. Also, I
don't recall there's much reason to assume Digby's recipes are for
anything other than the slicing jellies and marmalades. I just thing
Digby is assuming his reader will place the current, prevailing
definition of a fruit jelly or marmalade on the recipe, which is exactly
what his 20th-century readers often do, too.    
 
> Surely this culinary process did not just appear full-blown in the seventeenth
> century.  There must be antecedants, even if unrecorded.  Are there earlier
> sources?  What's the earliest date that can be put on a recipe for sweet fruit
> preserves?

As I say, I think there's one or more recipes for fruit preserved in
wine, honey, and spices, in Apicius, roughly 1st - 3rd century CE
(there's some question as to the identity, and therefore the date, of M.
Gavius Apicius). The next time they seem to crop up, in the sources I'm
familiar with, is in the 14th century.

Based on the availability of recipes (which isn't always the best
benchmark, but currently most of what we have to go on) the jams,
jellies, and marmalades we know today don't _seem_ to have been common
until the late 18th - early 19th century, which, coincidentally, seems
to be when canning technology made significant leaps.  

Adamantius
- -- 
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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