FACTORALY - E120 JAM

Episode Date: December 25, 2025

Jam is a great way to preserve fruit and all its goodness. And it's been the preferred method of keeping fruit for quite some time. This episode goes into all it's sweet gooiness and comes out with very sticky fingers. As always, click on the pics and links to discover some jarring facts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, ho, ho, hello, Bruce. Ho, ho, ho, hello, Simon. Merry Christmas to you, sir. And Merry Christmas to you and to our listeners. Indeed. Merry Christmas, Factorolites. Yes, and a happy new year to you all as well. All of that stuff. Now, we know that the key thing on this Merry Christmas Day,

it's not the present, it's not the food, it's not the family and friends. It's making the time to listen to an episode of Factorily. Well, what else are you going to do? Yeah. No other plans for the day, have we? Well, you can also listen to this on Boxing Day, I guess. You could listen to it every day of the 12 days of Christmas on repeat if you wanted to. Except we did that already, didn't we?

Yes, we did. So if you go back, I'll put a link in the show note. to all of our other 12 days of Christmas factorily episodes, which were all, I think, about 12 minutes long? The little mini episodes that throw our numbering system completely out of whack. Those are the ones. But we did them once. Christmas hasn't changed.

Nope. So just listen to those again. I guess before you do that, how would you like to listen to something about jam? I can't think of anything more suitable for Christmas Day, Bruce. Is jam a Christmassy thing? I don't think it is, is it? I can't think of a single piece of Christmas food or paraphernalia that has anything to do with jam

Unless you include cranberry sauce. Oh, oh yes, yes. They are tenuous link inserted. Yes. However, let's get on with it anyway. Let's. So this week, our subject picker has chosen from 500 subjects and picked the word jam.

So it has. Do you like jam? I do like jam. Can you make jam? I've never tried. You should. Can you? Yes.

What sort of jam do you make? I've made plum jam, strawberry jam, black currant jam, all sorts of jams, really. Yummy. The trick is to use as much fruit as you possibly can, and yet it become jam. So it sets. Yes. And the way to make it set is to use, there's a special. preserve sugar that you can get that has pectin

in it. Right, okay. So you can use less of that sugar than you would normal sugar. Oh, I see. I mean, there are people who put like all the plum stones into a bag and then sort of put the plumb stones in with the jam and boil and get the pecting out of the stones. So some fruit has more pectin than others.

Yes. The fruit that has more, it's sort of a gelling agent, isn't it? It's what makes jam set. Yeah. So some fruit has more of it and therefore you don't need to add it. Other fruit has less so you need to put more in. Yes. So before we get cracking on this, what's the difference for our American friends between jam and jelly? I was hoping you'd ask this, Bruce. Goodness me. So there are, it's a wonderful language,

isn't it? Yes. It means different things to different people. In UK terms, which is going to be primarily the basis upon which we're talking, I think. Yes. One definition I found of jam is a spreadable preserve made from boiling down a mixture of fruit, sugar, sometimes water. Yes. That's jam. America generally agree with that definition of jam. They don't eat it as much as we do, but if you ask an American what is jam, they will give you pretty much a description of what we think is jam.

Yes. Jelly, on the other hand, so if jam is made by boiling down fruit, jelly is generally made from boiling fruit juice. So there's no solid matter involved. Ah, okay. We call that jelly. Yes. The Americans call that gelo, which see our episode.

on jelly, is an American brand name. What they do have, though, is something that is somewhere between jam and jelly. So you can, you can sort of have jelly that you would spread on toast, which is like jam, but a bit more jellyish, with no lumps in it. It's just smooth. Jelm. Something like that. So, yes, there's all of that going on. But what we're talking about is jam. Yep, we're definitely talking about jam. There are an awful lot of words that seem to be quite interchangeable. The definition I had, which is that jam is a spreadable preserve, preserve seems to be the overarching word for all of these things. So jam, marmalade, chutney, conserves are all a type of preserve. Yes. Which speaks to its original purpose,

which was to say it was a way of preserving fruit. In the winter. In the winter. Yeah, when there wasn't any. Exactly, yeah. So it was a way of preserving fruit. And, you know, people obviously at some point are rather realized actually this is just nice to eat as it is. So what do you call a jam that you make with oranges from Seville? Personally, well not personally, everyone would call that marmalade. So there's a difference. Jam is jam. Yes. Marmalade is marmalade. The difference is that marmalade uses citrus fruit. That's it. If you make a jam in the same way that you would ordinarily make a strawberry or raspberry jam,

but you used citrus fruit instead and, importantly, used some of the shredded peel, that would automatically be called a marmalade. So it doesn't have to be orange. It could be lemon or lime. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Anything citrusy. I didn't know this. Interesting origin of the word marmalade here.

So there's the fact and there's the myth, isn't there, about marmalade. Yeah, there is. Yeah. What do you know about either of those? Well, the myth I understand is all about being seen. sea sickness cure. Yes, okay. So it's Mermalad.

So like sea illness. Oh, like a melody? Yes. Oh, that's brilliant. Yes, so it's Mermalad. So Marmalade actually cured seasickness. Right. Which I know is not true.

Fine. And I believe Mary Queen of Scots, he's often attributed as being one of the first key creators of Marmalade because she had her physician make her some of that to cure her seasickness. Yes. Allegedly. The fact is Marmalade comes from a Portuguese word

marmalada, which was originally a quince jam in the 15th century, because the Portuguese word for a quince was a marmalo, which comes from the Greek melemyon, meaning honey apple. Oh, okay, honey apple. Honey apple was the old Greek name for a quince, apparently. Okay, fair enough. So yeah, Mary Queen of Scots or not, I don't know, but that's where it came from. Interesting. Okay, I'll buy that. And on the etymological subject, the word jam, this is a really weird one.

You know, we always talk about words that are hundreds of years old that have morphed and derived and changed over the centuries. Jam seems to have suddenly appeared out of nowhere, somewhere in the early 18th century. And it was used to mean to wedge or force or press something. So in a tight jam, jamming something in. Jamming your fingers in a door. jamming your fingers in a door, something getting jammed in the works, it means to press or to squeeze or to wedge. And therefore, when you squish fruit and turn it into this stuff, you're jamming the fruit. Okay.

But it just suddenly appeared out of nowhere in the 18th century, which is quite unusual for us. We usually find words that are older than that. But the idea of preserving fruit as a source of energy and vitamin C and stuff has been, I mean, okay, Egyptian, Greek or Roman. Depends who you ask. I'm going to say Greek. Yes. Yes. The first known written recipe for jam is actually in a fourth century Roman cookbook.

Oh, is it? Yeah. Huh. But we think that the guys who are preserving fruit with honey goes back to the Greeks. Yeah, that sounds like the Greeks, doesn't it? It sounds like something they would do. They're ones for their honey. Yes, absolutely.

I kept on seeing on websites phrases similar to, Would you believe the process of preserving food and therefore jam goes all the way back to prehistoric times about 2.6 million years ago? and then the sentence stops. There's no evidence to back it up. Well, no, if it's a question, then you can answer that question, no. Well, no, yes, no, I didn't know that because it's not true. No, I don't believe that. Yeah.

So no, I'll go with the Greeks. That sounds plausible. Okay. But the idea is that because it was made in Greece, it was then used in Egypt. Sure, yeah. Nearby. Yeah. And that the Crusaders, coming back from the Crusades, would bring back through

preserves from there to France and Britain and Spain. Oh, I see. And interestingly, around that same time, sort of late 11th century, the time of Crusades, that's when sugar first entered Europe as well. So stick those things together. Jam. Exactly. Jam was a kind of a way of showing off because sugar was eyewatering the expensive. Yes, it was. Yeah. So if you were like kind of wasting the sugar in a way of preserving fruit you can oh hello you must try some of my jam

which meant that you had spent an absolute fortune on sugar yes it was it was for the wealthy for quite a while wasn't it there was sort of we mentioned Mary Queen of Scots with her marmalade but Louis the 14th of France used to do exactly that

he would show off his wealth he'd sort of display silver cutlery and yeah ridiculously lavish feasts but he would end every meal by serving jam and just sort of bragging about his wealth and luxury it's a bit like pineapples yes just like pineapples yeah the centerpiece when you could actually hire a hire a pineapple rent a pineapple maybe we should start that you know it's been used as a way of capturing energy for a while I mean It was taken by Captain Scott of the Antarctic fame as a high source of energy.

Right. For not much weight, not much space for a lot of energy. So you get the sugar. I mean, you burn through calories on those things. Yeah, of course. So fast. And yes, he took jam and marmalade on his 1910 Antarctic expedition. Right.

Apparently, Joan of Arc was said to consume large quantities of quince jam before going into battle. Something I didn't know. I've never heard this phrase before. It was written as if it was absolutely, you know, standard. But Napoleon Bonaparte is known as the father of canning. Yes. I didn't know this. Yes. Apparently he was looking for a way to preserve food and make it portable and long-lasting for his troops in battle.

And he got some inventor called Nicolas Apeo to find a way of sort of potting these preserved foods. Yes. He sort of came up with cans. Yes. One of those was jam. Jam in a can. Jam in a can. I used to have jam in a can at school.

Did you? We used to have these enormous great sort of, I don't know, maybe two litre cans of jam, opening the lid. And then you'd scoop out vast quantities. When you were talking about young boys, they need a lot of energy. Yes, of course. We'd get through loads of these things. Yeah. It was probably absolutely terrible for us, but that was your jam.

Exactly. Quite. apart from when you get older obviously then you can then you can make a drink called gin and jam when you actually mix gin with jam and it's quite nice oh can you know I've never heard of that that sounds interesting jam can be quite good for you I mean I know it's got it's like packed with sugar and we'll probably you know rot your teeth and stuff but it's actually a really good source of fiber if you have proper jam with fruit in it that's a source of fiber

hmm okay and antioxidants so they help with sort of weight management and heart disease Right, okay. I wonder if that good is counteracted by the massive amounts of sugar. Oh, I'm sure it is. You talked about jam being a good source of energy, being used by military and explorers and so on. This was quite prevalent in World War II as well. The American jam company Welchers set up just after the first World War. Yes. I love their grape juice. Right, grape juice. Okay, so there we go.

So Welch's came up with a product called Grapearlade, which is marmalade, made with grapes. Are grape citrus, though? No. I refute the fact that it has, it should be grape jam, but we'll ignore that. Okay. They came up with that, and their entire inventory was bought up by the US Army and shipped to troops during the war as a source of sugary sustenance for them. I guess also a taste of home, a bit like the way Coca-Cola did the same thing. Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Wow. And then Welch's launched their Concord Grape Jelly, which is the still spreadable stuff but without the chunks. Yep. Which is still available today. So, you know, it's been used for military troops for ages. And then you get one of the most quintessentially, stereotypically English practices of the Women's Institute making jam. German Jerusalem. Doesn't get much more English, does it, than they say?

So during World War II, you know, massive impact of shortages and rationing and so on and so on. The members of the Women's Institute were given a government grant of £1,400, doesn't sound a lot now, but was a lot back then. Yes. To buy sugar specifically for the purposes of making jam, either for use at home or to send to the troops. at home it was used to conserve fruit in order to make it last longer in order to sort of help them through the rationing period I think that the government supported it

because it was an idea the idea was to give the working classes a source of vitamin C and fruit yeah absolutely and they were really prolific between 1940 and 1945 over 5,000 tonnes of fruit were preserved and turned into 1,600 tonnes of jam.

Wow. It's a lot of jam. It explains why we needed the convoys to come over with the sugar. Well, yes, it does, isn't it? Looking at that list of different things that seem almost interchangeable and confusing in terms of which is what is which. I look to chutney. There are more and more food shops that sell these vast rows of jams and chutneys and pickles and things. And I've seen things like chili jam, but apple chutney.

Oh, okay. I associate chutney as being savory and jam as being sweet. Yes. But I've seen jars that sort of state the opposite. And I'm pretty sure I've come to the conclusion. It's all just branding, really. It's the same thing with a different name. Yeah.

Chutney is generally accepted as being a savory dish using vinegar, so it's a bit more acidic. But I've consumed chili jam. And I can kind of understand it. So technically, do you remember our episode that we did where we talked about what's a fruit and what's not a fruit? Oh, yeah, we've gone there several times. Yes. So if you made tomato chutney, should that technically be tomato jam? Some say yes.

So such a thing does exist. Does it? Yeah, yeah. So you know that old adage of knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit? Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. Exactly. It's similar to that. Yes, you can make.

tomato jam but it's usually savoury and therefore you would eat it as a chutney so if you called it tomato chutney not a problem no I think it's easiest just to say jam is sweet and you spread it on your toast yes chutney is savory and you put it on the side of a main course you say toast or bread or or scones or is it scones or is it scones or Is it going on, is it first or after the cream? Right, okay. As I understand, it's a question, whether you live in Devon or Cornwall, whether you put the jam on first or second.

Yes, it is. And I can never remember which way around it is. Okay, so I've had this drummed into me a few times by friends who live in the West Country. The Devon way of doing it, which I personally believe is the correct way of doing it, is... Jam on first. No, it's the other way around. Right. Oh, dear. Conflict.

So with Devon, you go scone, cream, jam. Yes. In Cornwall, you go scone, jam, cream. Okay. I go the Devon way. Yes. What do you do? So if you believe that cream is a form of milk, which is a type of butter,

and therefore should go on first. Yes, okay. And then the jam is like a little dollop of jam that you put on as a flavouring on the top. Exactly, yes. If, however, you believe that jam is the base and that the cream is like a, you know, know, like a little topping of cream, then the cream should go on second. I believe that the cream is like butter and the jam is like a little dollop of deliciousness that goes on top of it.

I agree. I think you need more cream and less jam. I think the flavour of and sort of the potential tartness of the jam, depending on what jam you're having. You don't need so much of it and therefore it makes sense for it to go on top as a little blob. Yes. So good. I think we both go the Devon way. I did a little bit of research into cream teas whilst we're here.

Not that this is an episode about cream or tea, but it fits nicely into the wheelhouse, doesn't it? Devon and Cornwall have been arguing for a very long time as to which is the proper way of doing it and who owns the rights and all this sort of stuff. It seems that Devon has a pretty good case to say they invented the thing so they can do it however they like. Okay, so it's a Devon cream tea. Yeah. And this goes back to the 11th century. They didn't actually use scones at first. they use bread, but it sort of seems to be this is our base level.

Tavistock Abbey was ruined by a Viking raid in the 10th century. See our episode on Vikings. The workers who came to fix the Abbey were kind of given provisions and food and sustenance by the monks, and they served them homemade bread with homemade clotted cream and homemade jam in that order. Okay. And that became a popular snack for passers by travellers who were going past the abbey would come and partake. And then obviously it became more and more popular around the 19th century with rail travel and tourism flourishing in the south-west of England. And it became more and more popular.

Eventually scones were used instead of bread. Cups of tea were served on the side. Tadar, cream tea. So I think the Devon Way is oldest and more authentic and personally preferable. Yes, fair enough. Sorry, Cornwall. Wow. Not that sorry.

Sorry, not sorry. Yours are nice as well. I mean... Do you know how I sometimes go off on tangents on these things? You, Bruce, tangents? Never. Go on. What have you got?

I've got three different sorts of jam. Oh, goody. Shall we start off with phantom jams? Oh, yes, let's. Phantom jams are very interesting, and because of my interest, in cars, I think phantom jams are absolutely fascinating. So a phantom jam is a traffic jam caused by somebody doing something stupid. Right. Breaking suddenly or changing lanes for no apparent reason or just rubbernecking and something on the other side of the carriageway and slowing down. And this has

like a domino effect and not just a drop, but it actually slows down more and more and more of the traffic after you. And so a phantom jam is a jam that isn't caused by anything. Wow. It's just caused by somebody doing something stupid and it can cause like quite a long traffic jam that you get to the front of and you go, what was that about? Yes. And there's nothing there. There's no accident to look at. There's nothing at all. And I've seen aerial images of these things and, and yeah, you're sort of looking along the stretch of a motorway and there's just a little quarter of a mile cluster where all the cars are squished together because of something that happened an hour ago. It lingers. It's sometimes called SWAT.

SWAT. Shear weight of traffic. Oh, okay, right, yeah. And I wasn't able to find too many stats for the UK, but in the US, the average commuter spends 40 hours a year in traffic jam. That's a whole working week just sitting in a traffic jam. Oh, my good. Per year? Per year.

Wow. Well, that's a much less pleasant type of jam. It is. They've been some pretty bad traffic jams in the UK. There was one which on the 5th of April. in 1985, I don't know if you remember this, it was on the news, there was a 40 mile holdup on the M1. I mean, you would expect, you know, in bad weather, but April? It went all the way from Junction 16 to Junction 18 on the M1.

Goodness me. Big jam. Wow. Mind you not, not the biggest jam. Okay. Because the biggest jams happen on rivers. Right. Oh, wait, wait, wait.

Oh, log jam? Yes. Yes. I got one. You did? So there was the great raft in Louisiana on Red River, which was in place for about a thousand years, this log jam. It's like a massive log jam. I'm sorry, for how long?

A thousand years, they reckon. They reckoned. It was cleared in about 1830. What? But it was, it basically blocked up the whole river and diverted the river into there's a whole lakes and a whole eco-examination. system based on the fact there was this log jam that was just blocking up the river see our episode on beavers yes absolutely um and this log jam was 175 miles long good grief so that's that's just logs that have fallen naturally naturally into into the river it's not that loggers have sort of come along and used the river to transport them so because of eco reasons they now don't transport logs down rivers

anymore they're all transported on trucks right as they realize that logs were causing an issue when they were floated down the roof, although I still like the idea of floating a lockdown road. It just seems more eco. There's something a little bit sort of lumberjackish about it, isn't it? Exactly. Much more lumberjackish, much more Czech shirt. Yes, exactly.

Like the one you're wearing right now, in fact. Well, there you go. I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay. But there was one at Chippewa Falls in May 1880, and I'm not sure how long it was, but the amount of wood there was in the river, amounted to half a million cubic metres of wood. Half a million cubic metres.

That is a lot of wood. Flipping, heck. And that was one of the reasons why they decided that there may have to be a better way of getting wood from the forest down to the mill. Wow. The Royal Albert Hall is approximately 100,000 cubic metres. Right, so five times that. Five Albert Hall's worth of wood.

Yes. Stuck in a river Yes Wow That's a lot It's a lot But you talked about jamming Yes

Which brings me on to music Of course it does Jamming is a thing that you do in music When you're collaborating with other people So you're sort of making stuff up as you go along Jam sessions and things like that Yes it's all sort of slightly improved And feeding off each other's music

Yes That idea of jamming has been I mean, obviously there's things like, you know, how does Bob Marley like his donuts? We're jamming. Thank you. So there's that. But there's also things like there was a record company called Def Jam. Oh, yes.

So it's still going, Def Jam. It's now owned by Universal. Def Jam was bought by Polygram, which was then bought by Seagram. Right. You know the Whiskey people? Oh, yeah, yeah. They own so much stuff. You don't even realize that they own.

They sort of started Universal Music. Just crazy. But Def Jam had some very big artists. They signed people like LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Rihanna, and other people, which we won't mention, like J-Z, and Kenya West. The people we weren't into it. And the Beastie Boys. We won't talk about them.

So Def Jam, incredibly popular jam record label. Wow. Another very popular musical combo, British combo, was called The Jam. They were called The Jam, yes. So that was Paul Weller, Bruce Foxton. and Rick Butler. Yes. And they had some fantastic, I mean, the music was so good.

You know, that's entertainment, eaten rifles, start, going underground, and town called Malice. Yes. I mean, all completely huge singles. Totally, yeah. And these guys met at Shearwater Secondary School in Woking, which is... Oh, that's not too far from me, yes. Yeah. So the jam were formed very near where Simon lives.

Ah, brilliant. I've seen Paul well alive. What? In Woking. No, not in Woking. No, it's slightly more... in Brixton Academy. Oh, right.

Several years ago. Phenomenal performer. So much energy. Ridiculous. Do you know why we call it jamming? Do you know why we have all of those words jam in music? I don't. Why is it called jamming?

It's because of jam. No. The essence is essentially we're going to get together, pour loads of things together and make something sweet. Pour a little sugar on it. Well, that as well. You know, you bring your sax. I'll bring my guitar.

bring your drums whatever we'll all make it up as we go along we'll put something in it together we'll make some sweet musical jam and then that became the verb to jam so it's all connected interesting because other other creative outlets have also adopted the idea of jamming so you have things like a writing jam yes you do don't you yeah so where a lot of people get together and they try and write something collaboratively that's right yeah and there's even an art jam as well where lots of people try and create a piece of art i mean if you think about it um what do they call those blankets that you make with lots of different squares

of crochet. Patchwork quilt. So patchwork quilt is a kind of craft jam. Yeah, that's fair enough. So what are we doing here? Are we calling this a fact jam maybe? Oh yes. Well, it is really, isn't it? We're having a fact jam. We're jamming about facts. Might start using that.

Have you got any jam records for us? I have got some jammy records for us. Have you? So we've got, there are lots of this. It's funny, some topics don't have very much. Some have loads. So I've just picked a few.

One is the highest number of jam donuts eaten in three minutes. I bet I can beat it. Well, you can try. At first, this seems like a really small number. But then you sort of think about the actual practicality of it. It takes me a couple of minutes to eat a single donut. Yes, that's true. This person has eaten 10 donuts in three minutes.

Okay, I can't beat that. Just over three a minute. I definitely can't. This was in 2020. We've mentioned her before. This was someone called Leah Shuttkeva from the UK, who's sort of a serial record-eating person. We've mentioned her a few times.

The fastest time to eat a single jam donut. With no hands and no lip-licking, 11.41 seconds, mind-boggling. Yes. Achieved by Philip Joseph Sontaro from San Francisco. The no lip-licking is the hard thing. Yeah, it is, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. That was in 2014. There's the world's largest jar of jam. Right. It was created in Lebanon and weighs 1,500 kilos. A ten and a half. Oh, that's full of jam as well. That's full of jam. That's not just the jar.

And this was sort of created by a consortium of apple growers. They made this whopping great big portion of... Is it a glass jar? It's a glass jar. Yeah, it's glass jar. Is there a lid? Yeah, there's a lid as well. It actually looks like a proper jam jar. It's just really, really big.

Goodness. Well, like one of those bon mamons sort of. Yes, exactly like that, yes, just on a much larger scale. Wow. And then, my personal favourite, we have the world's largest jam-filled biscuit. A jammy dodger? Yes. Okay. Imagine, if you will, a jammy dodger, in the shape of a tennis racket.

Yep. being roughly 26 and a half kilos in weight, measuring 52.5 centimetres wide and 127 centimetres long, filled with jam in the middle, with a hole in the middle so you can see the jam. And this was created in 2017 by Francis Quinn and Hamilton Bakery from Rutland in the UK in honour of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships. Gosh. They nicknamed it, the Grand Slammy Dodger. Isn't that wonderful? That's great. Well, I think I've used my entire preserve of jam-related facts.

Well, it was certainly a jam-packed episode, this one, wasn't it? It was, wasn't it? Yes. Well, we should pump up the jam by getting people to do things for us, if you wouldn't mind. That would be splendid. So, first thing you can do for us is to like this episode, or to like factorily in general, actually. But if you like this episode, and you didn't find it too sweet, then please leave us a five-strawberry review, no, a five-star review. Yes, that would be lovely. Thank you very much. And if you have some equally nerdy, fact-loving friends, please tell them about factorily, because you never know.

It might just be their jam. Then they can come along and listen as well. Very good. Yes, or you can, if we've got stuff wrong, which we know we do quite frequently, you can write to us at hello at factorily.com. You can also visit our socials. We've got a Facebook page. We've also got an Instagram page.

Yes, indeed we have. We're very social. And, of course, if you hit the subscribe button, then every Thursday morning you'll get a lovely little notification saying that a new episode has landed. So thank you all very much for coming along to listen to this particularly un-Christmassy Christmas Day episode. And please come again next time for another fun-filled

factual episode of Factorily. Merry Christmas. Joyneau.