Translated from French (please notify us of errors)
A preserve of quinces in honey, an apple so sweet it was called a “honey-apple”, a witty poet who confuses them on purpose: marmalade has, behind it, a history of almost two thousand years.
Ancient texts feature two terms at the heart of the puzzle: melomeli and melimela. Both words combine the Greek meli, “honey”, and mēlon, “apple” or, more broadly, “fruit”. But in one order the first time, and reversed the second. And that changes everything.
Melomeli is a culinary preparation. In the 1st century, Columella explains how to prepare it. You need quinces that are perfectly ripe and free of blemish. They are placed whole in a container, then top-quality liquid honey is poured in until the fruit is completely submerged. The process serves two purposes: the quinces are preserved for later consumption, and the honey takes on their fragrance. Columella notes that the liquid thus obtained takes on the taste of mulsum, honeyed wine[1].
At the same time, the Greek physician Dioscorides knows this preparation under two names, melomeli (μηλόμελι), which we already know, and kydōnomeli (κυδωνόμελι), literally “quince-honey”. His method differs slightly: the quinces are deseeded, plunged into a large quantity of honey and left there for a year. The result becomes sweet and pleasant. He too compares the outcome to honeyed wine, which he calls in Greek oinomeli[2].
Pliny the Elder does not use the word melomeli, but gives three ways of preserving quinces: sealing them to exclude all air, cooking them in honey, or immersing them in it[3].
We are still far from jam. Melomeli is above all a preserve of fruit in honey. In Columella, the name refers more precisely to the honeyed, fragrant liquid that results from it.
The melimelum grows on a tree
Let us turn, then, to the second term mentioned in the introduction, melimelum or, more often in the plural, melimela. Here we are no longer dealing with a preparation, but with a particular fruit. Varro, as early as the 1st century BCE, removes all ambiguity. In his list of fruits that can be kept on straw, in a dry place, in the fruit-store, he includes quinces, “struthea” apples (a variety), Scantiana, Scaudiana, orbiculata (other varieties), and “those that used to be called mustea and are now called melimela”[4].
Pliny the Elder explains a few generations later why the name of this apple changed: the mustea ripened quickly, he says. They are now called melimela “because of their honeyed flavour”[5]. Dioscorides confirms this: some, he notes, also call these fruits glykymela (γλυκύμηλα), literally “sweet apples”[6].
Columella, as we saw above, described the quince melomeli at length; he adds that other varieties of apple can likewise be preserved in this same honeyed liquid – orbiculata, Cestiana, Matiana, and – precisely! – melimela. But he immediately notes a drawback: preserved this way, they “seem to become sweeter” without keeping “their own flavour”[7]. In other words, in this very text, melimela does indeed denote one apple variety among others, one that can in turn be preserved in honey – at the cost, according to Columella, of its own flavour.
The ancestor of the word “marmalade” thus begins its career by denoting a sweet apple that Pliny judges particularly poor for keeping[8]. It will take a long detour before it comes to denote something else.
Martial sows confusion…
At the end of the 1st century, in the space of two lines, the poet Martial muddies the waters.
In the thirteenth book of his Epigrams, he devotes a short piece to the Cydonea, quinces:
“If you are served quinces steeped in Cecropian (that is, Attic) honey, you will say: ‘Here are some melimela that I like.’”[9]
Martial is not claiming that melimela are normally quinces: the very title of the epigram calls the fruit Cydonea. But once steeped in honey, the quinces become, for the space of a couplet, perfect “honey-apples”.
And so the meaning of our two terms, already so close in sound, merges through the genius of a poet.
…And the honey-apple ends up becoming a quince
Much later, in the 7th century, Isidore of Seville shows that the connection has by now become explicit.
He explains the name malomellum, descended from the classical melimelum, in two ways: the fruit is said to bear this name “because it has the flavour of honey, or because it is preserved in honey”[10]. And immediately afterwards he reproduces, without naming him, Martial’s couplet on quinces steeped in honey.
It does not stop there.
Latin melimelum, “a kind of very sweet apple”, eventually gave rise, on the Iberian peninsula, to words denoting the quince: Spanish membrillo and Portuguese marmelo. This shift in meaning was probably encouraged by the closeness to melomeli, the preparation of quinces in honey, and by wordplay such as Martial’s[11].
It is from Portuguese marmelo that marmelada was born, the paste or preserve of quinces. The word is attested in 1521 in Gil Vicente’s Comédia de Rubena[12]. Spanish then borrowed it as mermelada: in 1539, Antonio de Guevara still speaks explicitly of a “mermelada portuguesa”.
French followed suit: the churchman, writer and historian Guillaume Paradin mentions in 1573 some “confitures sèches et mermelades”; the spelling marmelade appears in 1602[13]. English adopted marmalade, at first for a quince preserve, before gradually reserving the word mainly for citrus preparations. Italian borrowed marmellata, attested at the end of the 16th century, and made it, in everyday usage, the general name for fruit preserves.
Melomeli is therefore not the direct ancestor of “marmalade”. But it may have contributed to the shift in meaning: the modern name of the preserve descends from an old “honey-apple” whose name ended up denoting the quince, probably under the influence of this old preparation of quinces in honey.
A genuine medley – with, let us be clear, no etymological connection whatsoever to the Greek meli, “honey”.
[1] Columella, De re rustica, XII, 47, 2–5.
Nihil tamen certius aut melius experti sumus, quam ut cydonea maturissima integra sine macula et sereno caelo decrescente luna legantur et in lagona nova, quae sit patentissimi oris, detersa lanugine, quae malis inest, conponantur leviter et laxe, ne collidi possint; deinde, cum ad fauces usque fuerint composita, vimineis surculis sic transversis artentur, ut modice mala comprimant nec patiantur ea, cum acceperunt liquorem, sublevari; tum quam optimo et liquidissimo melle vas usque ad summum ita repleatur, ut pomum summersum sit. Haec ratio non solum ipsa mala custodit sed etiam liquorem mulsi saporis praebet, qui sine noxa possit inter cibum dari febricitantibus; isque vocatur melomeli. […] Illud vero, quod multi faciunt, ut ea dividant osseo cultro et semina eximant, quod putent ex eis pomum vitiari, supervacuum esse nunc docui […] nam ea mellis est natura, ut coerceat vitia nec serpere ea patiatur, qua ex causa etiam exanimum corpus hominis per annos plurimos innoxium conservat. Itaque possunt etiam alia genera malorum, sicuti orbiculata, Cestiana, melimela, Matiana, hoc liquore custodiri; sed quia videntur in melle dulciora fieri sic condita nec proprium saporem conservare…
“We have, however, found nothing more reliable or better than this: to gather perfectly ripe quinces, whole and unblemished, in clear weather and a waning moon; after wiping off the down that covers the fruit, arrange them gently and loosely in a new jar with a very wide mouth, so that they cannot knock against one another. Once they are packed up to the neck, hold them in place with small crossed willow rods, so as to press the fruit lightly and stop it rising when it receives the liquid; then fill the vessel to the brim with the best and most liquid honey available, so that the fruit is entirely submerged. This method not only preserves the fruit itself: it also yields a liquid with the taste of mulsum, which can safely be given, at mealtimes, to those with fever; this liquid is called melomeli. […] As for the practice of many people, who cut them with a bone knife and remove the seeds because they think these spoil the fruit, I have shown that this is unnecessary […] For such is the nature of honey: it halts decay and does not let it spread; for this reason it even preserves, for many years, a lifeless human body without its corrupting. Thus other kinds of apples too, such as orbiculata, Cestiana, melimela and Matiana, can be preserved in this liquid; but because they seem to become sweeter when kept this way in honey, they do not keep their own flavour…”
[2] Dioscorides, De materia medica, V, 21, 1;
καὶ μηλόμελι δέ, ὃ καὶ κυδωνόμελι ὀνομάζεται, σκευάζεται μήλων κυδωνίων ἐξαιρεθέντων τὰ σπέρματα καὶ ἐμβληθέντων εἰς μέλι ὡς ὅτι πλεῖστον, ὥστε ἐνεσφηνῶσθαι. γίνεται δὲ προσηνὲς μετ’ ἐνιαυτόν, οἰνομέλιτι ἐοικός.
“The mēlomeli, also called kydōnomeli, is prepared by removing the pips from the quinces and placing them in as large a quantity of honey as possible, so that they are tightly wedged in. After a year, the preparation becomes sweet and pleasant, resembling oinomeli.”
[3] Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, XV, 60:
Cotoneis in concluso spiramentum omne adimendum aut incoqui melle ea mergive oportere.
“As for quinces, once sealed up, all access of air must be excluded; or else they must be cooked in honey, or immersed in it.”
[4] Varro, Rerum rusticarum libri tres, I, 59, 1:
De pomis conditiva, mala struthea, cotonea, Scantiana, Scaudiana, orbiculata et quae antea mustea vocabant, nunc melimela appellant…
“Among the fruits that can be preserved, struthean apples, quinces, Scantiana, Scaudiana, orbiculata, and those formerly called mustea and now called melimela…”
[5] Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, XV, 51:
Mustea a celeritate mitescendi, quae nunc melimela dicuntur a sapore melleo.
“[They are called] mustea because of the speed with which they ripen; these are now called melimela because of their honeyed flavour.”
[6] Dioscorides, De materia medica, I, 115, 3 (Wellmann edition, Berlin, Weidmann, 1906, vol. I, p. 108, l. 15–17):
τὰ δὲ <μελίμηλα> […] καλεῖται δὲ ὑπό τινων γλυκύμηλα.
“As for melimela […] some call them glykymela.”
[7] See note [1].
[8] Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, XV, 59:
Amerina maxime durare, melimela minime.
“The Amerina keep longest, the melimela least.”
[9] Martial, Epigrams, XIII, 24, Cydonea:
Si tibi Cecropio saturata Cydonea melle / ponentur, dicas: «Haec melimela placent.»
“If you are served quinces steeped in Cecropian honey, you will say: ‘Here are melimela that I like.’”
[10] Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, XVII, 7, 5:
Malomellum a dulcedine appellata, quod fructus eius mellis saporem habeat, vel quod in melle servetur; unde et quidam: Si tibi Cecropio saturata Cydonia melle / ponentur, dicas: Haec melimela placent.
“The malomellum is so called because of its sweetness, because its fruit has the flavour of honey, or because it is kept in honey; whence these verses by a certain author: ‘If you are served quinces steeped in Cecropian honey, you will say: Here are melimela that I like.’”
Isidore does not name Martial; it is modern editorial tradition that identifies these verses as Epigrams XIII, 24.
[11] Joan Corominas and José Antonio Pascual, Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, vol. IV (Me–Re), Madrid, Gredos, 1981, s. v. «membrillo», p. 32. Corominas derives membrillo from Latin melimelum, “a kind of very sweet apple”, which he considers to have been confused with melomeli, “quince preserve”:
MEMBRILLO, del lat. MELIMELUM ‘especie de manzana muy dulce’ […] confundido con MELOMELI ‘dulce de membrillo’.
[12] Gil Vicente, Comédia de Rubena, the children’s scene (play dated 1521; collected in the Copilaçam de todalas obras, Lisbon, 1562):
Temos tanta marmelada, / que minha mãe m’há de dar.
“We have so much marmalade that my mother must give me some.”
[13] Guillaume Paradin, Mémoires de l’histoire de Lyon, Lyon, Antoine Gryphius, 1573, p. 316: “confitures sèches et mermelades”.
Medley comes from Old French medlee/meslee, from the verb mesler (“to mix”), itself from Vulgar Latin misculare, from Latin miscere, “to mix” – a coincidental echo of melomeli, with no actual link to the Greek meli, “honey”.
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