CHESTNUTS AND RUM JAM

The Chestnut and Rum Jam, is a delicious compound with a gelatinous consistency with the fruit in question, the distillate, water and sugar. 

The chestnut is the fruit of the Chestnut tree, one of the largest trees in the forests of the Bel Paese along with oak and beech. Its origins are very ancient, much more than those of man, and also quite uncertain, it seems that it has always been widespread in most of the earth, from Europe to America passing through Asia Minor and northern Africa. 

Even the first primitive men were already eating chestnuts, an important food and available to everyone. In fact the Greek Xenophon defined the chestnut as the tree of bread, and this was the case even in the following centuries, it was the bread of the poor present on every peasant table, at least until the arrival of potato and corn from America. They were a very nourishing food and therefore an excellent life saver in lean periods and famines.

Chestnut is also a very long-lived tree, the most famous and “old” one is Sicilian, it was right on the slopes of Etna, in the commune of Sant’Alfio.

According to some botanical experts it would be even 3-4000 years old, which would make it in all probability the oldest living being in Europe. It is about 25 meters high while the circumference of the trunk reaches 22 meters and that of the foliage is over 50 meters.

It is called the “Chestnut tree of the Hundred Horses”, because the legend says that, in the Middle Ages, a queen found refuge here from a storm with the hundred knights of her escort and their horses.

Rum is the brandy obtained by distilling the molasses produced by sugar cane.

Its origins are very ancient, some similar liqueurs derived from this plant were already appreciated and produced in China and in the Indies at the time of Marco Polo who tasted a variety in Persia.

Among the first ones in the seventeenth century to discover that molasses, obtained by sugar processing, could turn into alcohol by fermenting, there are the slaves working in sugar cane plantations in the Caribbean.

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 to be used only for citrus fruits 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”.