The 2008 Marmalade Festival is on Feb 10th, click here for full programme

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The meaning of the word marmalade has changed over the centuries. Our first marmalade was a thick quince paste eaten at the end of a meal as a digestive and was believed to possess all sorts of other miraculous medicinal qualities, including the power to inspire both men and women to 'acts of venery', which I guess means practical sessions in the arts of the goddess Venus. It was no wonder that prostitutes were known in Shakespeare's day as 'marmalade madams'. It comes as a suprise to us moderns that our favourite breakfast preserve started life in England as the Tudor version of viagra.

Some kinds of quince marmalade included ingredients such as ground-up pearls and musk and were thought to aid conception. Other medicinal marmalades contained substances that nowadays we would not want to be looking up at us from our breakfast plate. A late seventeenth century apothecary called William Salmon gives a recipe for 'Marmalade for the Head', which he claims 'cures most Diseases of the Head, as Frenzy, Madness, Epilepsie, Apoplexie, Vertigo, Megrim and Lethargy'. One of its chief ingredients was an alcoholic tincture of man's skull!

Early quince marmalades were frequently printed with amazing designs from wooden moulds. We got the name marmalade from the Portugese marmelo - meaning quince, but we called these delicious pastes by other names too, which have now been forgotten, like cotoniack, quiddany and Genoa paste. To see some printed marmalades and cotoniacks, go to my website page on quinces. Whole oranges were carved with beautiful designs and preserved in jelly or syrup - a marmalade flavoured art work. Here are some I made about a year ago -

One of the earliest printed recipes for a marmalade actually made from oranges was published by the early writer Gervase Markham in 1615. Like the quince variety it was a thick paste kept in a box. Markham's direct descendents live in Cumbria, so I have decided to enter a box of his re-created recipe for a competition to find Britain's best marmalade. Very different from the modern breakfast conserve, Markham's marmalade is nevertheless delicious and has attracted interest from chef Ashley Palmer-Watts, who is considering putting it on the menu at Heston Blumenthal's world famous Fat Duck in Bray, as an after-dinner treat.

It is going to be interesting to see what the judges make of it at the world's first marmalade festival, which is being held here in Cumbria at Dalemain House on Februry 18th in aid of Hospice at Home. To find out more visit the marmalade festival website . This is an event not to be missed.

I will be in Dalemain's historic kitchen during the day talking about the fascinating history of this extraordinary preserve - with lots of samples of period marmalades at hand to try, though don't worry, there will be no Marmalade for the Head!