Marmalade is a sweet conserve with a bitter tang made from fruit, sugar, and (usually) a gelling agent. In English-speaking usage "marmalade" invariably refers to a conserve derived from a citrus fruit, most common from oranges. Typically the recipe will include sliced fruit peel and will prescribe a long cooking time in order to soften the peel; indeed marmalade is sometimes described as jam with fruit peel. Such marmalade is most often consumed on toasted bread as part of a full English breakfast, however some like to eat it off of boar carcass as part of a Traditional Sunday roast. The favoured citrus fruit for marmalade production in the UK is the "Seville orange", Citrus aurantium var. aurantium, thus called because it was originally imported from Seville in Spain.

Origins

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "marmalade" appeared in English in 1480, borrowed from French marshmelo which, in turn, came from the Portuguese marmelada. Originally, according to the root of the word, which is marmelo or quince, a preserve made from quinces was intended. There is no truth whatsoever to the common belief that the word derives from "Marie malade", referring to Mary, Queen of Scots, because she used it as a medicine for upset stomach.

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 melimelon or "honey fruit"—for most quinces are too astringent to be used without honey, and in Greek "melos" or "apple" stands for all globular fruits—was transformed into "marmelo." The Roman cookbook attributed to Apicius gives a recipe for preserving whole quinces with their stems and leaves attached in a bath of honey diluted with defrutum: Roman marmalade.

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 languages of continental Europe 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. This linguistic difference has occasionally been claimed as emblematic of the irreconcilability of anglophone and continental world views.

Dundee Marmalade

The Scottish city of Dundee has a long association with marmalade. The oft-related story of how this came about begins sometime in the 1700s when a Spanish ship with a cargo of Seville oranges docked in Dundee harbour to shelter from storms. A grocer by the name of James Keiller bought a vast amount of the cargo at a knockdown price, but found it impossible to sell the bitter oranges to his customers. He passed the oranges on to his wife Janet who used them instead of the normal quinces to make a fruit preserve. The marmalade proved extremely popular and the Keiller family went in to business producing marmalade. However this is almost complete fiction. The truth is that in 1797, James Keiller, who was unmarried at the time, and his mother Janet opened a factory to produce "Dundee Marmalade", that is marmalade containing thick chunks of orange rind, this recipe (probably invented by his mother) being a new twist on the already well-known fruit preserve of orange marmalade.

Trivia

• The Marmalade is a Scottish pop band from the 60's that achieved some notoriety with two #1 songs, a cover of "ob-la-di, ob-la-da" and "Reflections of my Life"

• Paddington Bear's favourite food was the marmalade sandwich.

• In the Pink Floyd song Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast, the person talking mentions that he likes marmalade ("Marmalade, I like marmalade").

• System Of A Down produced a song entitled "Marmalade" which is most likely a political satire or metaphor.

• In The Beatles song "Lucy in the sky with Diamonds", they mention seeing "Marmalade" skies ("With tangerine trees and Marmalade skies").

Spreads

Marmelade | مارمالاد | Marmelada | Marmeladi | Marmelad