Are the British losing their marbles over marmalade? English breakfast tables are now potentially liable to European political correctness. Thereby hangs the tale of how, in an interconnected world, things may find new identities away from their birthplace while facing rude shocks at home.
There is a debate on whether Keir Starmer’s Labour government, already on a shaky wicket at home, would be compelled to say ‘citrus marmalade’ for something they never thought would need an adjective. After all, the dictionary defines marmalade as a “type of jam made from oranges or lemons”. The touch of mildly bitter rinds is what makes marmalade tangy, much like the clipped accent of the Queen’s English.
Members of the UK’s House of Commons recently expressed outrage after reports that the bread-spread associated with Queen Elizabeth—because of her fictional video with marmalade-loving Paddington Bear—may be subject to re-labelling under a trade deal with the European Union. It might have something to do with the Germans, who use the word ‘marmalade’ for all sorts of fruit preserves. The new requirement is a pushback from the Brexit days as Starmer’s Britain tries to start life afresh with the EU. Maybe the UK should insist on calling it “British marmalade” when it is made from citrus fruits.
They may pick a leaf from the Bengal vs Odisha battle over who invented the rosogolla. Bengal now has a geographical indication tag for ‘Banglar rosogolla’ while Odisha has received a separate GI tag for ‘Odisha rasagola’. It seems spelling the same thing differently can get you some mild respite in intellectual property disputes. A GI tag acts like a trademark to protect authenticity and offers a limited guarantee for authorised producers.
Heritage gets shaky in a shrinking world. We Indians have often had to worry about misappropriation of traditional knowledge. In the 1990s, India had to fight two significant battles. Government agencies won one dispute against the US patenting the medicinal core of turmeric, which in India is part of grandma’s remedies for everything from sore throats to wounds, and another that restricted US-based RiceTec from taking a patent on basmati rice.
Twice-bitten, hundreds of times shy. Thanks to increased IP awareness, India now has more than 500 GI-tagged products that include Alphonso mangoes, Nagpur oranges, Bikaneri bhujia, Kanjeevaram silk, Pashmina shawls and Darjeeling tea. But global appropriation is a two-way street. You sometimes have to give as good as you get. Some of the most common things assumed to be Indian at least by large parts of the world are not Indian if history were to bear witness.
Samosa’s origins are traced variously back to central and western Asia or even Egypt, where it was called sambusa and typically filled with meat. If you think replacing meat with potatoes makes it truly Indian, think again. Potatoes were brought to India from South America by the Portuguese in the 17th Century. Syrupy jalebis, often relished with samosas, trace their origin to Arab lands where they were called jalebia. Had the Arabs and/or Turks got GI tags for samosas and jalebis, the history of Indian cuisine would have been different, at least in name.
As for the British, it may be time for them to frown on William Shakespeare, who famously wrote, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet.” Imagine Starmer invoking the best-known English writer to defend a concession to the EU. It is unlikely to wash. There is another layer of irony when you notice that a name for what is essentially a preserve cannot be preserved so easily.
But then, culture can be manufactured. I grew up reading P G Wodehouse’s stories of elite British life in which a combination of eggs and bacon seemed quintessentially English. But things have rolled on from there.
An Austrian-born American nephew of psychoanalyst Signmud Freud, Edward Bernays, is considered the father of public relations. He is credited with making the heavy-duty breakfast combo popular in America, where orange juice, rolls and coffee used to be the morning staple. Bernays famously co-opted 4,500 doctors in a campaign to boost the idea that a heavy breakfast was a healthy one. The story made it to newspapers across America. The rest is culinary history.
It is quite a reverse swing for me to infer that Wodehouse’s “British breakfast” may have its origins in American PR strategy. The main years he wrote his bacon-laden Jeeves novels, the 1920s and the 1930s, coincide with the high points of Bernays’ comparably long career. The two were born just 10 years apart.
Marmalade, meanwhile, is now a many-splendoured thing. It is made in India with GI-tagged Nagpur oranges, Himalayan Galgal lemons and locally-grown ‘Malta oranges’. In a world of fusion cuisine and social media collaborations, culture has become as unpredictable as the English weather.
Madhavan Narayanan
Senior journalist
Follow him on X @madversity
(Views are personal)