The tradition of making marmalade out of quinces and bitter oranges goes back at least 14 centuries in Persia (modern Iran), and likely even farther. This post is boiled down (so to speak) from a presentation I gave yesterday at the fourth annual "Mad for Marmalade, Crazy for Citron" event presented at Fort York in Toronto by the Culinary Historians of Canada.“For countless generations, the Persians have preserved all manner of vegetables, fruits, and flower petals, first in honey or molasses, and later in sugar to serve them as dessert or at the breakfast table,” writes Forough-es-Saltanah Hekmat in his book The Art of Persian Cooking. But precisely how long ago did the tradition begin? This image, from the Walters Art Museum, shows a Persian dining scene from 1209, but I believe that Persian diners were enjoying marmalade long before this.
Sweets concocted of sugar, fruits and flowers would not only have been considered tasty, but would, it seems, have fit into a traditional philosophy of dining as an almost spiritual practice. Hekmat writes that “a healthful diet of vegetables, fruits, fish, fowl and certain delicacies composed of mixed petals and blossoms of roses was believed to have unusual powers that could transform a man into a gentle and noble creature.”
We have some evidence for the long history of quince and apple preserves from a Pahlavi text entitled "King Husrav and his Boy", published and translated by Jamshedji Maneckji Unvala. King Husrav II of Persia (pictured on this coin, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons), was a historical figure who reigned from 580 to 628 AD. His name is more often spelled in English as "Khosro" or "Khosrow", but can also be rendered as “Khusrau”, “Chosroes” or “Xosrov”. He was also nicknamed “Parvez”, which means “Ever Victorious”. (I'll use another spelling, Khusro, because it seems like a good compromise among all the variants.)
Khusro II is also a character of literary legend. For example, he is the hero of a poetic tale called “Khusro and Shirin” pictured here in a 16th-century illuminated manuscript), which tells how he met and courted his Armenian bride and future queen. In the story "King Husrav and his Boy" (also known as “King Khusro and his Page”), a noble young man named Vasphur whose family has become impoverished requests to be tested for the king’s service. King Khusro poses thirteen questions to Vasphur to test his nobility; not, as one might expect, having to do with his fighting prowess, learning or virtue, but instead about his knowledge of luxurious living.In what becomes a catalogue of 6th-century Persian fine dining, Khusro questions Vasphur about the best and most desirable fowls, meats, broths, fruits, grains and wines (as well as music, flowers, women and horses). For example, when questioned as to which dish is the finest and most savoury, Vasphur describes the organ meats of a two-month-old lamb fed on its mother's milk and also cow's milk, rubbed with olive juice and cooked in a beef broth.
The fifth question is “Which pastry is the finest and the best?” Vasphur answers: “In summer: the almond-pastry, and the walnut-pastry, and the walnut-bun, and the bun made with fat, and the finger-pastry (...) that they fry in walnut-butter. But with the fruit-jelly that is squeezed out and filtered from the juice of the apple and the quince, no pastry can stand the contest!” In other words, by the 6th century, Persian nobility already thought of quince and apple preserves as the best of all desserts!
Persian cooks had all the raw materials at their disposal very early on. It is thought that the quince tree may be native to Persia. There does not seem to be consensus as to where oranges were first cultivated, but some say bitter oranges first grew wild in Persia on the shores of the Caspian Sea, and were hybridized to produce the sweet orange in China, then returned to Persia by Portuguese traders. Najmieh Batmanglij, in her book A Taste of Persia, points out that “The sweet orange reached Europe in the first, tenth, or fifteenth century, according to various sources, and ironically, took its western name from the Persian narenj, or bitter orange, while in Iran, the sweet orange is called porteqal, after the Portuguese merchants who imported it.”
Clear evidence for the cooking of bitter orange preserves in Persia by about 1300 is found in these lines from the poet Bos-hac of Shiraz, quoted in The Art of Persian Cooking: “Do not be grieved, O Sour Orange! Like the sweet orange, turn into preserves / And then your sourness will change into sweetness.”
Sugar was also known very early in Persia; it was encountered in India by the soldiers of Darius I of Persia around 500 BC, and by those of Alexander the Great around 300 BC. Anne Wilson, in The Book of Marmalade, postulates that "the Persians may have been the first people to have employed sugar as a foodstuff" (as opposed to a medicine).
However long the tradition has been going on, fruit and flower preserves are still today cherished as part of a classic Persian breakfast (sobhaneh), which consists of elements familiar to any European or North American: tea and milk, bread and butter, cheese, eggs, fruit, honey and some kind of preserves. These would most likely be made from tree fruits like quinces, apples, pomegranates, plums, cherries or citrus fruits, rather than berries.
Whereas the English and French jam-making traditions tend to use lemon juice to raise the acid level of preserves, Persians use limes. Also, writes Hekmat, “cardamom seeds are the favourite flavoring [sic] for all preserves. They should be crushed fairly finely in a small mortar with a pestle and added to the preserve 2 to 3 minutes before it is to be removed from the heat.” Rose water and orange blossom water are also common; ginger, cloves, mace, nutmeg and vanilla are less often used.
The Persian word for both jam and marmalade is “moraba”, also rendered “morabaa”, “murabba” and many other ways. It is a borrowing from Arabic, although Persian is an Indo-European language like English. Here are some Persian jam and marmalade recipes to try:
- Moraba-ye Narenj: Seville Orange Marmalade: New Food of Life, p. 277. This recipe makes an extremely tart marmalade, since it uses very little sugar indeed. I have posted a variation of this recipe that I call Persian-style Three-fruit Marmalade, using sweet oranges and lemons instead of bitter oranges, and a higher sugar ratio.
- Moraba-ye Beh: Quince Jam from Persian City
- Moraba-ye Albalu: Sour Cherry Jam from Persian Mirror. The secret of thickening this jam is to macerate the cherries first. It uses vanilla as a flavouring.
- Moraba-ye Alu Zard: Golden Plum Jam from Persian Mirror.
Moraba-ye Havij: Carrot Marmalade with rose water, from the excellent food blog Turmeric and Saffron. - Moraba-ye Havij: Carrot Marmalade, a Food.com recipe using saffron and orange blossom water.
- Moraba-ye Havij: Carrot Marmalade: Here, the blog Family & Food & Other Things explores a recipe from the book Middle Eastern Kitchen by Ghillie Basan.
Moraba-ye Bahar Narenj: Orange Blossom Jam, The Art of Persian Cooking, p. 164. I can't see where this recipe gets enough acid to make it safe for canning, so I suspect it should be refrigerated and used up fairly quickly. - Moraba-ye Goleh Sorkh: Rose Petal Jam, a grandmother's recipe (and you know these are always good) from another great Persian food blog, My Persian Kitchen.
- Abbott, Elizabeth, Sugar, A Bittersweet History (Penguin Canada, 2008).
- Batmanglij, Najmieh, A Taste of Persia: An Introduction to Persian Cooking (I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 1999).
- Batmanglij, Najmieh, New Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies (Image Publishers, 2005).
- Hekmat, Forough-es-Saltanah, The Art of Persian Cooking (Doubleday & Company, 1961).
- Loohuizen, Ria, The Realm of Fig and Quince, (Prospect Books, 2010).
- Ramazani, Nesta, Persian Cooking, A Table of Exotic Delights (University of Virginia Press, 1974).
- Wilson, C. Anne, The Book of Marmalade (Prospect Books, 2010).
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