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September 25, 2010
Vive la difference
“What’s the difference” they asked me on my first trip to France in 1975 [and I translate for you here free of charge] “between marmalade and jam?”
I was at a loss for adequate explanation then and it’s taken me a mere 35 years to figure it out. I mumbled something about citrus fruit and strawberries and bread and toast and took a large gulp of pastis with a view to losing myself in its heady grasp.
It doesn’t help that in Germany they call jam marmalade and have been known to put mango chutney on toast.
Toasting bread caramelises the sugars therein, giving it the distinctive golden brown colour we know so well. This maybe makes toast taste sweeter than bread.
Marmalade, with its citrus fruit thing, is notably bitter and generally not as sweet as jam. So we put the bitter confection on the sweet comestible and the sweet confection on the less-sweet bread.
There are those who put jam on toast but their cause is not mine. My mother, I remember, would sometimes put marmalade on buttered bread late at night by way of a snack. A chef I knew in France would always put a spoonful of strawberry jam in Bolognese sauce - to take the edge off the tomatoes, he said, in French, naturellement.
Posted by john at September 25, 2010 10:45 AM
Comments
..........When is Jam not Jam ?
if you need any of the Bonne Maman "empty" glass jars I have a rather large collection :0)
Posted by: paula at September 25, 2010 01:04 PM
I might occasionally eat jam on toast but I would never EVER eat marmalade on bread. That's the difference. Marmalade cannot be eaten on bread. Your mother is the exception that proves the rule. Glad that's cleared up now.
Posted by: Daphne at September 26, 2010 10:45 AM