Behind the French Menu: Marmelade – Marmalade in French cuisine.

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

Marmelade d'Oranges Amères
Bonne Maman, France.

Marmelade – Marmalade.
French Marmalade began in Portugal

In France, Marmalade is not always made with orange and or citrus fruit jam. The French for a jam or conserve is a confiture. The French began importing quince jams, confitures de coings, from Portugal over 200 years ago. Then the labels on the jars in Portuguese read marmalade, but in Portuguese, a quince, the fruit itself, is a marmelo, and the jam or conserves made with quince is Marmalade. The French adopted the word marmalade and used it for many other fruit jams, not just quinces.

A ripe quince looks somewhere between a yellow apple and a yellow pear. While quince jams reached France via Portugal, the Romans probably brought the first quince trees to Portugal from Turkey or Macedonia. Roman cookbooks have left us recipes for quince jams, so we know they were over 1,000 years ahead of France in using that fruit.

Quince
Photograph courtesy of madras91
www.flickr.com/photos/96579667@N05/22282176435/

Other countries, including the U.K., began making conserves with other fruits and also took the Portuguese word marmalade. The French created many excellent marmalades, including marmalade de ananas, pineapple marmalade, Marmalade de frais, strawberry Marmalade, and many more.

The European Common Market Bureaucrats step in.

In 2004 the European Union bureaucrats decided it was time to make order in the confusing world of Marmalade. Ten years later, 2014 became the last year for using the word Marmalade for any jam or jelly made with a fruit other than citrus fruits in the E.U. I'm not sure how the Portuguese feel about that as they owned the word's origins, and it means a quince conserve. Despite the E.U. legal ruling, many French chefs, with their years of schooling, had learned to make marmalades long before the European laws were made. These chefs still make marmalade d'abricot, apricot marmalades, and other fruit conserves and insists on using the word marmalade. Tradition in the French kitchen is tradition, so marmalades without citrus fruits still appear on many French menus.

Marmalade on French Menus:

Filet de Biche Sauce Grand Veneur, Marmelade de Potimarron, Citron et Airelles Sauvages – A fillet of a mature female red deer. On a menu listing like this, the deer will have been farm-raised, or the words biche sauvage would have been noted. N.B. From the French word biche comes the English word bitch. The fillet is served with a Grand Veneur Sauce; that is a traditional sauce for game and translates as the sauce of the master of the hunt. The sauce's recipe has changed over time and now is usually made with red wine vinegar, butter, fresh berries, and crème fraîche. Accompanying the fillet on this listing is a marmalade, a jam made with pumpkin, lemon, and wild European cranberries. Many animals considered gibier (game) in the wild are also farm-raised in France.

A dual serving of foie gras and quail.
Photograph courtesy of stu_spivack
www.flickr.com/photos/stuart_spivack/2439756443/

Foie Gras de Canard Marmelade de Cerises Noires – Very lightly fried fattened duck's liver served with a black cherry jam.

Pineapple Marmalade
Photograph courtesy of CDKitchen

Médaillons de Chervil et Marmelade d'Airelles – Round or oval cuts from a farm-raised roe deer served with a European cranberry marmalade.

Tartare de Noix de Saint Jacques et sa Marmelade d'Abricot à la Vanille de Madagascar – A tartar made with the meat of the King Scallop served with an apricot jam flavored with Madagascar Vanilla. Vanilla is another New World discovery that Christopher Columbus and his conquistadors in 1502 could not pronounce with the native name. The native name was tlilxochilt, and by the time the conquistadors arrived home, this herb had become vainilla in Spanish. The vanilla the conquistadors brought home was wild vanilla, and it remained wild and expensive for 400 years. Vanilla was finally cultivated in the 19th century, but it still requires a lot of hand labor. Today the major vanilla producers are Madagascar, Indonesia, Mexico, and China.

The vanilla bean grows quickly on the vine,
but it is not ready for harvest
until maturity, and that is approximately ten months later.
Photograph courtesy of Reizigerin
www.flickr.com/photos/svostrova/4615971215/

Pavé de Saumon Marmelade d’Agrumes – A thick cut of salmon served with a grapefruit jam. In French, agrumes mean citrus fruits; however, agrumes nearly always mean grapefruits on a menu. The French word for grapefruit is Pamplemousse, but as Pamplemousse can be used in an insulting manner in French, almost all menus will note agrumes.

Terrine de Canard aux Pistaches et Marmelade de Mirabelles - A duck pate with pistachio nuts served with France’s favorite Mirabelle plum.

Marmelade d'Oranges Amères - Bitter Orange Marmalade.

My personal preference for a French orange marmalade is La Marmelade d'Oranges Amères, bitter orange marmalade. This marmalade is made with the slightly bitter Seville oranges. The confusion over the name marmalade with the name of a quince jam was not limited to France. Scotland, not France, was the birthplace of bitter orange marmalade. The first bitter orange preserves were first made in Dundee, Scotland. There are a number of stories about how Seville oranges ended up in Dundee; unfortunately, they are all too long for this post.

An old Scottish Dundee Marmalade jar.
Photograph courtesy of Smabs Sputzer (1956-2017)
www.flickr.com/photos/10413717@N08/5734581069/

The French diner knows what a non-citrus marmalade is and, as usual, ignores any interference by EU Bureaucrats in their diet. Dining in France, even at meals in school, is unlike dining in any other country. This is a nation that teaches children in state schools to eat correctly and slowly and also to know what they are eating. There are no sweet drinks in French schools, just water from the tap and three-course lunches consumed over half an hour to forty minutes. Twenty or more years ago, a French child may have had enjoyed in school a marmalade without citrus fruits. That man or woman today will continue to accept that and ignore the EU ruling.

Dundee Orange Marmelade
Photograph courtesy of Mackays

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