[Sca-cooks] Jam

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Oct 30, 2007, at 8:21 AM, Elise Fleming wrote:
> My picky-ness is because (as I think I mentioned) a person has been  
> making
> excellent jams but has been saying that the recipes are medieval.   
> From
> everything written so far, and especially what Huette wrote and what I
> found last night (below), the thing we Americans call "jam" (mashed/ 
> pureed,
> spreadable fruit and sugar) is not "medieval" and appears not to  
> have truly
> developed until post SCA period.

 From where I'm sitting, it looks as if there's a sort of diverging  
[over time and in different location] view of preserve-as-amalgam,  
that which is preserved, and the preserving medium. I'm getting a  
little incipient flash of some vague, unidentifiable insight that  
somehow central to this question is, as what point, where and how does  
a preserve stop being X preserved in goo, syrup, jelly or candy, and  
start being "preserves"? Or, for that matter, jam?

Look at this question alongside the one that appears when we look at,  
say, Kosher or dill pickles [i.e. generally small cucumbers pickled in  
this way] and things like Branston Pickle, which Americans probably  
don't think of as a pickle in the ordinary sense. It's essentially  
fancy pickle relish, or a chutney relative.

> Flashback... Are we having a cuskynole-type discussion??

Definitely. But I have to tell you I'm having a hard time handling the  
seething hatred this flame war has just bursting from every  
post... ;-). I may have to unsubscribe.

Adamantius