Marmalade

   Marmalade is a bitter, jellylike preserve, once made from quinces but now primarily from oranges, including some of their peel. This word has thrived in folk stories, even though there is no direct line between the preserve and its ancestor.

   A story repeated for centuries says that when Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587) was out of sorts, the only food that could tempt her was a conserve of oranges, for which she had an inordinate fondness. Hence the name of this jam after the queen's indisposition: Marie malade ("sick Mary"), which, with time, became marmalade. Willard R. Espy reports that in a London Times tournament dealing with the British trusty breakfast companion marmalade, the question was, who invented it? There were many zany answers, but the one with the greatest appeal was that it took a canny Scot to see value in the peel that others threw away. In Margaret Irwin's The Gay Galliard, The Love Story of Mary Queen of Scots appeared this etymological gem: "Marie est malade, he had muttered again and again as he racked his brain to invent something for her; and 'Mariemalade' they had called it ever since."

   Marmalade is a word that has come to us through antiquity. In Grecian times it was called melimelon, "sweet apple," and the Romans called it melimelum. Marmalade, by whatever name, traveled to Portugal, where the Portuguese named it marmelada, meaning quince conserve, from marmelo, meaning quince. Marmalade continued its travels to England, where, as early as 1524, this notation appeared in Henry VIII's Letters: "one box of marmalade . . . presented by Hull of Exeter." British housewives have, for many centuries, made marmalade with oranges.