The Fruity History of the Word Marmalade
Hello,
The family and I were enjoying “Paddington in Peru” last night when Mr Wordfoolery gave me a lead on the Portuguese history of marmalade. Naturally, as a marmalade fan I had to dig into it today.
Marmalade, as I hope you know, is a clear sweetened jelly in which pieces of fruit and fruit rind are suspended. Paddington Bear prefers marmalade made from oranges, especially those from his home place of Peru, but marmalades can be made from many different fruits. My mother-in-law loves a lime marmalade, for example, and rind-less examples also exist.
The noun entered English in the 1500s and it can even be used as a verb since the 1960s – to marmalade is to spread with marmalade in much the same way that we can butter toast as a verb also.
The original meaning of marmalade in English was a preserve made from quince. It came from marmelade in French which was borrowed from marmelada in Portuguese. The Portuguese word came from marmelo (quince) thanks to Latin’s melimelum (sweet apple, a fruit from an apple tree grafted onto a quince tree). The Latin term came from Greek melimelon which is compounded from meli (honey) and melon (apple).
Take a moment. That means that marmalade, which we now associate strongly with oranges has a word history going back to quince, apples, honey, and, in a way, melons. Marmalade is starting to sound like a good term for a fruit salad.
Crucially when marmalade landed in England it wasn’t describing something containing oranges, or at least not initially. It was the 1600s before the recipe expanded to citrus fruits.
Originally they were talking about an imported item from the Iberian peninsula – a preserve of quince fruits. Personally I’ve never seen a quince tree, although I have tasted their preserved form.
The quince is a deciduous tree with hard yellow fruit which are roughly pear-shaped. They taste hard and astringent. Easy to see why they were combined with sugar to form a jelly/preserve.
That preserve, a traditional Iberian food, is called marmelada in Portugual, marmelo in Galicia, but you might know it better as membrillo from Spain. It’s quite firm and goes well with cheese. Unless you really love it, you’re probably not going to spread it on your toast for breakfast or make it into a sandwich, as Paddington would.
In other news this week (April 2025) – You never know who’s reading your books! Susie Dent mentioned me on “Countdown” on Channel 4 (minute 26 in https://www.channel4.com/…/countdown/on-demand/75051-233). She also read out an excerpt from my ebook “Modern Words with Old Roots” about the word gazebo and said the book was “really good”. Absolutely delighted as I love her work and regularly use her books from my reference shelf. Plus she read it to Stephen Fry (squeak!).
Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,
Grace (@Wordfoolery)
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