Did You Know That?

The Romans started adding honey to their fruit to conserve it (and this was actually the first natural sweetener) and started boiling the mixture until they obtained the desired consistency. Sugar was introduced in Europe after a few centuries went by at the arrival of the Arabs to the Iberian Peninsula.

The Arabs, who lived in the South of Spain, added the same weight of sugar as the fruit and a pinch of carob flour and they kept it kept it over fire until it acquired the desired consistency. This is the way they started to make the jam that we all know of today and which has hardly changed as the years have gone by.

In the Middle Ages, jam was a delicacy for the kings and this Spanish product started to become known in the rest of Europe. Carlos V intruded jams and jellies to Germany and the lower countries such as Belgium, Holland etc. With the passing of the years these countries adapted the custom of using jams.

According to some authors the meaning of the word jam proceeds from a union of the words “honey” and “apple”. Others assure that it is the origin of the Portuguese word “marmelo” which means “quince”. On the other hand the French name it “comfiture” – from the verb preserve – and the English from the time of Isabel I, marmalade. A lot of the most common and delicious dishes that are prepared nowadays go back a long time thanks to the plant exchanges between the Old and New World.

An example of a traditional way of making sweets
Strawberries, that belong to the genre Fragaria, and they can be seen in their wild state in America, Asia, and Europe. In Europe there are different references about how people consumed them in the Ancient Roman times. In this way small strawberries spread throughout Europe until the end of the XIX century, which was the moment in which hybrids began within the European and American species with fruit that we now know as strawberries.

In Chile, before the arrival of the settlers the F. Virginian species was cultivated, from a big fruit. Small strawberries that were European and the small sized fruit, was crossed with the big American fruit which gave way to the big strawberries that belong to the species Fragaria X annanasa, which is a variety that is now cultivated.