Reçel (Preserving)

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By David Dale and Somer Sivrioglu

Published 2015

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There are more jams in Turkey than there are fruits, because we often make several types from the one ingredient—for example, orange rind marmalade and orange jam, or unripened fig jam, fresh fig jam and dried fig marmalade.
Some recipes are simple—as in, boil 1 kg (2 lb 4 oz) of berries with 800 g (1 lb 12 oz) of sugar for 30 minutes, adding the juice of half a lemon to prevent crystallisation. Some are more elaborate, like the rose petal jam we discuss in the Breakfast chapter.

The word reçel (jam) comes from the Persian ricar, which suggests an origin a little to the east of Anatolia. But we know the Romans were making marmalade with fruit and honey before they arrived in Byzantion, so we could also credit an influence from the West. The crusaders supposedly took jam-making recipes from Istanbul to northern Europe in the thirteenth century, and by the sixteenth century the futurologist Nostradamus was using them to impress the French royal family. Eat jam with pide and clotted cream.