A short history of well-travelled marmalade

It began innocently enough. My friend Jo in London, who is also obsessed with marmalade, was trawling the Internet one day and found a company that imports a coffee marmalade she wanted to try. The importer is in the U.S., but the coffee marmalade is made in Sicily. My friend first asked if the coffee marmalade could be shipped directly to her in London (England being closer to Italy than the U.S.). Apparently, it couldn’t. So she asked me if I could order it, then send it to her in London, so she could taste it and review it on her blog. She kindly offered to pay me for the shipping with dollars she has stashed away somewhere in her rambling house in north London. But I told her she could just send me a Fortnum & Mason chocolate rabbit for my daughter’s Easter basket instead. So far; so good.

I called the importer, a company called Gustiamo in New Jersey (www.gustiamo.com). A lovely lady (Martina) took my order, and as we were chatting, I mentioned to her that the coffee marmalade was for my friend in London who wants to review it on her blog. I placed my order, got off the phone, and went to make myself a well-deserved cup of tea. A little while later, the phone rang, and it’s another lovely lady from Gustiamo—this time the boss, Beatrice—who said she heard about the marmalade blog, and she would be happy to send the coffee marmalade at no charge to us. I said, "thank you so much" (thinking to myself in a Paddington Bear-like way that this could be the start of something truly wonderful—getting jars of marmalade in the mail for free!)

A week later, my little package came with not one, but two jars of Sicilian coffee marmalade. So the little box of marmalade, which had already crossed the Atlantic once (from Italy to New Jersey), is now wending its way back across the Atlantic again, from Boston to London. 

If you are curious (as I am) to find out what it tastes like, check out my friend Jo’s blog at http://www.projectmarmalade.com/ in a few weeks’ time. She needs to give the marmalade time to get over its jet lag.

  

Who Knew Marmalade Could Be Dangerous?

Under the heading of: “I couldn’t make it up if I tried . . . .”

Last year, it was reported that internationally acclaimed soprano Lisa Gasteen was able to return to the stage, three years after a mishap involving marmalade cut short her career. “In 2008, Gasteen had returned to her Brisbane home after a series of overseas performances when she spied her kumquat tree full of fruit. With a batch of marmalade in mind, she grabbed a bucket and climbed a ladder while still in her high heels, and pinched a nerve. The injury caused the muscles around her larynx to spasm painfully when she sang and forced her sudden exit from opera with a full schedule of bookings, crushing her fans worldwide.” [1]

Another news report describes how a millionaire killed during a robbery may have been fed marmalade by the raiders. Police suspected that the gang gave diabetic John Luper, the sugar-laden food thinking he had lapsed into a coma. A murder hunt was launched after Mr Luper’s body was found near a spoon and a jar of marmalade in a laundry room of his £1 million home in an affluent Leeds suburb. A post-mortem failed to establish exactly how Mr Luper died. [2]

And finally, a warning for all those who make marmalade: beware your stove. Biochemist and former teacher Keith Turnbull, 61, died in his remote cottage near Walk, northern England, just before Christmas while stirring homemade marmalade, unaware his faulty gas stove was emitting deadly carbon monoxide gas. The scientist’s dog Cleugh also died. [3]

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[1] Diva returns to opera stage to help emerging artists. (2011). The Gold Coast Bulletin, p. 33.

[2] Alastair, T. (n.d). Marmalade murder clue. The Sun.

[3] N.A. (n.d). British scientist’s death blamed on stove that leaked gas as he made marmalade. The Canadian Press.

Marmalade in Literature

Anyone who loves literature might be delighted to know how many times marmalade makes an appearance in the pages of some of our favorite childrens’ books as well as in grown-up literature. Of course, Paddington Bear loves marmalade so much it’s almost like a security blanket for him; (I can relate to that). When Alice finds herself tumbling down the rabbit hole in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, she picks up a jar called Orange Marmalade from a shelf—“but to her great disappointment, it is empty.” Look on Amazon, and you find that there are any number of children’s books and book series with main characters called Marmalade: Orlando the Marmalade Cat, A Star in a Marmalade Jar, Scotch Marmalade, Maine Marmalade, Marmalade Jim, The Mouse in the Marmalade. In the 1990s, the Japanese created The Marmalade Boy comic series, which became a television series, which became a movie, (which are now, alas, all out of print).

But it isn’t only in children’s literature that it appears. You’ll have to indulge me here, but even Shakespeare has Beatrice saying of Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing: “The Count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well; but civil Count, civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion.” Although I may be stretching the point too far here, you have to admit, she is talking about an orange in a fairly complimentary way. Or maybe "civil" is just a pun on "Seville?" (We won’t mention here that in Shakespeare’s time, marmalade was usually made from quinces.)

Charles Ryder, the protagonist of Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited, at Oxford in the 1920s, ate his “scrambled eggs and bitter marmalade with the zest which in youth follows a restless night.” Unfortunately, in The Road to Wigan Pier, “a jar of marmalade on a sideboard, ‘an unspeakable mess of stickiness and dust,’ epitomized for George Orwell the complete squalor of a working-class household.” [1] One of the several points on which I have to disagree with George.

More recently, The Beatles sang about marmalade skies in “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and today, Christine Aguilera sings “Lady Marmalade.” “Bill Nighy and Geoffrey Whitehead starred in Marmalade for Comrade Philby, a play about a mediocre novelist who, on his occasional trips to Moscow, always visits the spy Kim Philby—material for a future book—and takes him a pot of his favorite Oxford marmalade (thick-cut).” [2]

And finally, Americans fans of Jan Karon’s popular Mitford books (about a small North Carolina town and its residents), know all about Esther Bolick, baker of a famous Orange Marmalade cake that is so sought after that it is the prize in raffles. (See January 20 blog entry for the recipe for this cake.)

I love this stuff; I really do. If any of my readers (all three of you) find another mention of marmalade in literature, would you please email it to me? In return, I promise to send you one of my jars of homemade pink grapefruit marmalade. (I have a lot to spare; I made 8 batches this winter.)

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[1] R. W. Apple, Jr. (2002, March 27). This Blessed Plot, This Realm of Tea, This Marmalade. The New York Times, p. 1.

[2] (2009, July 30). Radio Choice. The Daily Mail, p. 65.