40 Fun Facts About Jam and Marmalade

Marmalade-loving Paddington Bear arrived in London as a stowaway from which South American country?

Peru was a late fix: Michael Bond first wrote that Paddington came from darkest Africa, until his agent pointed out that no bears live there.

In a 2022 Jubilee sketch with Paddington Bear, where did Elizabeth II say she kept a marmalade sandwich?

In her handbag, she revealed, kept for emergencies just as he keeps one. The pre-recorded sketch opened the Platinum Party at the Palace concert.

The word marmalade comes from marmelo, the Portuguese name for which fruit once boiled into a firm paste?

Quince was the original marmalade fruit: in the 1500s England imported it as a firm, sticky paste from Spain and Italy, long before orange versions appeared.

During World War I, British and ANZAC troops turned empty jam tins into improvised versions of which weapon?

Hand grenades were so scarce early in the war that engineers packed ration jam tins with explosive and scrap metal, and the ANZACs set up a tin-bomb factory at Gallipoli.

The jam doughnut that John F. Kennedy is wrongly said to have called himself is named after which German city?

Berlin gives the Berliner doughnut its name, yet in the city itself the pastry is called a Pfannkuchen, one reason the tale of a laughing crowd is a myth.

Which English county's cream-tea tradition puts clotted cream on the scone first, with the jam on top?

Devon spreads the cream first and crowns it with jam, while neighbouring Cornwall insists on jam first; in practice both counties serve it both ways.

Which fruit's jelly is the classic partner for peanut butter in the American PB&J sandwich?

Grape jelly, usually from dark Concord fruit, is the standard choice; the sandwich began as a teahouse dainty and was later eaten by US soldiers in World War II.

A popular but false tale traces the word marmalade to the French-speaking maids of which seasick royal?

Mary, Queen of Scots supposedly ate it for seasickness while her maids whispered in French that madam was ill. The word's real origin has nothing to do with her.

Which Spanish city gives its name to the bitter oranges prized for traditional British marmalade?

Seville oranges give a better set than sweet ones, so once a year fruit picked from the city's own trees is shipped to Britain for marmalade.

Which British royal, fond of jam-filled sponge cakes at tea, gave her name to a classic sandwich cake?

Victoria enjoyed the little cakes with her afternoon tea, and hers would have been filled with jam alone; the cream is a modern addition.

Which natural gelling substance, plentiful in apples and citrus peel, is what makes a pan of boiled jam set?

Pectin was isolated by French chemist Henri Braconnot in 1825, though cooks had relied on it for centuries, and today it is mostly extracted from dried citrus peel.

In American usage, jelly differs from jam because it is made from only which part of the fruit?

The juice alone goes into a jelly, with seeds and pulp filtered out, which is why it sets clear and sparkling while jam keeps the crushed fruit.

Vienna's glossy chocolate Sachertorte hides a layer of jam made from which fruit?

Apricot jam is so essential that Viennese versions made with other fruit cannot be called Sachertorte; in one story Franz Sacher invented it as a teenage apprentice.

Which American jam giant began with a farmer selling apple butter from a horse-drawn wagon in Orrville, Ohio?

Smucker's started in 1897 when Jerome Smucker built a cider mill and, by the company's own account, used apples from trees planted by Johnny Appleseed.

Which tart red berry makes the jam that Scandinavians traditionally serve alongside meatballs?

Lingonberry jam needs no added preservatives because the berries are naturally rich in benzoic acid, and the simplest version is just raw berries stirred with sugar.

Which French jam brand, launched to look home-made, is known for gingham lids and handwritten-style labels?

Bonne Maman is an affectionate French term for grandmother, and its owner Andros designed the jars to give a mass-produced jam a home-made feel.

Bergamot, a citrus sometimes made into marmalade, supplies the fragrant oil that flavours which tea?

Earl Grey owes its perfume to bergamot oil, taken from a fruit cultivated in Italy that is probably a cross involving the bitter orange.

Which screw-topped glass jar, a home-canning staple, is named after the American tinsmith who patented it?

The Mason jar honours John Landis Mason, who later lost his rights to an improved design when a court ruled he had waited too long to patent it.

Chutney, the spiced fruit relish now preserved with sugar and vinegar, originated in which country?

India's chutneys were originally made fresh to eat soon afterwards; sugar and vinegar came in as preservatives once they were made to be sold.

Little Scarlet, the tiny crop behind one of Tiptree's most prized jams, is a variety of which fruit?

Strawberry jam left the Tiptree factory at up to ten tons a day by 1906, and the Essex firm still grows Little Scarlet on its own farms.

Fruit curd, served with scones as an alternative to jam, is thickened by gently heating sugar with which ingredient?

Egg yolks thicken a curd much as they do a custard, which is why home-made curd was made in small batches: it never kept as well as jam.

Sarah Cooper's 1874 marmalade recipe, later eaten by James Bond in a Fleming novel, is named after which English city?

Oxford marmalade began as 76 pounds made by Sarah Cooper to her own recipe, and it caught on with the university's dons and students before selling far beyond the city.

Kaya, the sweet jam spread on breakfast toast in Singapore and Malaysia, is based on the milk of which plant?

Coconut milk gives kaya its richness, and the Malay name itself means rich; pandan leaves often flavour it and tint the nyonya style a light green.

Robertson's Silver Shred, the pale sister of the brand's Golden Shred marmalade, is made from which citrus fruit?

Lemon gives Silver Shred its pale colour; it joined the range in 1909, decades after Marion Robertson first turned a barrel of hard-to-sell bitter oranges into marmalade.

Which Scottish city, home of Keiller's marmalade, was long said to be built on jute, jam and journalism?

Dundee's three Js were its big industries, and legend credits Janet Keiller with boiling up a storm-delayed cargo of bitter oranges, a tale food historians reject.

Which polar explorer's South Pole expedition carried Frank Cooper's marmalade all the way to Antarctica?

Robert Scott's expedition took the marmalade south less than forty years after Sarah Cooper first made a batch of it to her own recipe.

Which berry, a cross involving raspberry, blackberry and loganberry, did Walter Knott popularise in California?

Boysenberry honours grower Rudolph Boysen, from whose abandoned, weed-choked farm Knott rescued a few frail vines; his own berry stand grew into Knott's Berry Farm.

The phrase jam tomorrow, for a promise that never arrives, comes from which Lewis Carroll book?

Through the Looking-Glass has Alice offered jam on every day except the present one, a donnish joke about a rule of Latin grammar.

Jammie Dodgers, the jam-filled shortcake biscuits, are named after Roger the Dodger from which British comic?

The Beano's schoolboy prankster lent his name to the biscuit, which Burton's bought in 1960 and went on to make at its Llantarnam factory.

Powidl, the dark Central European fruit butter cooked for hours with no added sugar, is made from which fruit?

Plums for powidl are picked as late as possible, ideally after the first frosts, so that they are sweet enough to need no added sugar at all.

A traditional Korean winter tea is made by stirring hot water into a marmalade of which citrus fruit?

Yuzu is the fruit's Japanese name and yuja its Korean one; the drink is often mistranslated as citron tea, though the two are different fruits.

Which British organisation ran wartime Preservation Centres where volunteers turned surplus fruit into jam?

Women's Institute volunteers canned or jammed excess produce during the Second World War, and everything they made went to depots to be added to the rations.

The word jelly reached English through French from the Latin verb gelare, which means to do what?

Freeze is the root sense: the French word came from geler, to congeal, and Latin gelare is related to gelu, the word for frost.

Bar-le-Duc jelly, a French luxury, is traditionally made by flicking the seeds out of each currant with which tool?

A goose quill lets the seed extractors remove the tiny pips without damaging the fruit, and about 200 painstakingly seeded currants go into one small jar.

The annual World Marmalade Awards are staged at Dalemain, a country house in which English county?

Cumbria has hosted the awards at Dalemain, near Penrith, since 2005, and the festival has gained a sister event in one of Japan's citrus-growing centres.

Which British brand, begun by a Leith ship chandler selling lime cordial, added a lime marmalade in the 1930s?

Rose's grew from Lauchlan Rose's 1867 patent for preserving citrus without alcohol, and its Leith factory sat beside Scotland's main Royal Navy harbour.

Jersey's black butter, a dark apple preserve from the Channel Islands, includes which unexpected ingredient?

Liquorice sets the Jersey version apart, while in Japan apple butter often contains real dairy butter, which the classic preserve never does.

Which British TV gardener is a descendant of Janet Keiller, whose family launched a pioneering marmalade brand?

Monty Don is one of her great-great-great-great grandsons, and the noted archaeologist Alexander Keiller was another of her descendants.

In which Agatha Christie mystery is the first victim poisoned through a new jar of marmalade at breakfast?

A Pocket Full of Rye sees Rex Fortescue killed by taxine, a yew poison, hidden in marmalade from a jar that only he used; Miss Marple untangles it.

Sufganiyot, deep-fried doughnuts filled with red jelly, are the signature treat of which Jewish festival?

Hanukkah's fried foods recall the miracle of the Temple oil, and Israel's labour federation promoted the doughnut over the latke to create more bakery work.