WILD BERRIES JAM

Wild berries jam is a delicious compound with a gelatinous consistency made of these small berries, water and sugar. 

The berries are a set of different fruits accumunati from the fact of being born, even spontaneously, all in the same environment just the under forest, where it creates the perfect humidity for these shrubs.

Strawberries, raspberry, currant, black currant, blueberry, mulberry, blackberry, cranberry, gooseberry and black elder belong to this category. Berries in general are particularly rich in vitamin C, B vitamins, fiber, water, mineral salts and fructose.

They are wild plants, typical and autochthonous of the Mediterranean area, but they also quietly grow further north. The origin is uncertain, but we know they were already gathered and cultivated by Celts and Gauls, who, besides eating them, used them as dyes for clothes. These small spontaneous fruits were also very appreciated during the times of the Roman Empire, where women especially added blueberry leaves to their baths in order to promote tanning. In the Middle Ages instead, thanks to their beneficial properties, they were used as real and proper medicines in galenic preparations.

Jam is the name with which we identify all fruit based preserves, whereas the term marmalade, often used in our language as a synonym, is used only for citrus fruit based products.

The production of this sweet sauce is very ancient, it is already mentioned in the cookbook of the Roman writer Apicius, who told us that in the fourth and fifth century Greeks boiled quinces together with honey in order to obtain a sweet spreadable mixture. 

A rudimentary jam was also appreciated by Romans who produced it by mixing fruit, grape must, raisin wine and honey. 

For the use of sugar instead we must wait for the Middle Ages, which allowed to obtain a result more similar to the ones we can taste today.

It is in fact in this period that marmalade was invented and there are many legends about its origin. The birth of orange marmalade is attributed to queen Catherine of Aragon, who after her marriage with the king of England Henry VIII, feeling the lack of the fruits of her homeland, created this sweet compound in order to taste them in her new home as well.

Another legend instead attributes the creation and the name to the duchess Maria de Medici, who after her marriage and the following transfer to France with her husband Henry IV, began to suffer from a lack of vitamin C. In order to solve the problem, her doctor ordered a cure made of the best citrus fruits of Sicily, at that time however it was not easy to keep fruit for the time of such a long journey, therefore in order to solve the problem they prepared glass jars with citrus fruits and sugar, on which there was the writing “for sick Maria” which in French was misinterpreted as “marimalede“.