The Irish Grandmothers’ Jam

Michael
Jul 17
3 min read

There I was, standing on a farm in southern Denmark, looking suspiciously at half a kilo of redcurrants.

I had never made jam in my life.

Not once.

I could explain developmental psychology, lecture on educational theory, and probably write a respectable chapter about human learning—but ask me to preserve fruit, and I’d have been more likely to preserve it by eating it all.

Yet somehow, as I looked at those little ruby-red berries, something peculiar happened.

I could almost hear two voices.

Not loudly.

Just enough to make me wonder if I’d spent too long in the sun.

“Go on then, Michael…”

“…they’re not going to turn themselves into jam.”

It must have been my two grandmothers. One with an Australian-Irish story, and the other with deep British-Irish roots.

Now, as far as I know, neither of them had left behind an ancient leather-bound book entitled The Sacred Knowledge of Redcurrant Preservation. Yet in that moment, I became convinced that somewhere in the tangled branches of my family tree there existed a forgotten hereditary gene: Hibernicus Conservus Domesticus—the legendary Irish Jam Gene.

Scientists have not yet discovered it.

Mostly because nobody has looked.

With a saucepan in one hand and absolutely no confidence in the other, I picked the berries from the bushes, carried them into the kitchen, and began following a recipe while hoping that invisible Irish supervision counted as experience.

Every now and then I imagined one grandmother nodding approvingly.

The other was probably shaking her head because I hadn’t added enough sugar.

When the berries started popping in the pan, it felt less like cooking and more like a tiny magical ceremony. Clouds of ruby-red steam drifted upwards as if the currants themselves were giving up centuries of Danish sunshine in exchange for becoming something entirely different.

The wooden spoon almost seemed to stir itself.

Or perhaps that was simply the grandmothers taking over for a moment.

By the time I reached the rolling boil, I realised something remarkable.

I wasn’t following a recipe anymore.

I was participating in one of humanity’s oldest traditions: taking fruit that would disappear in a week and persuading it to survive the winter in a glass jar.

There is something wonderfully optimistic about jam.

It says, “Summer isn’t over. We’ve simply bottled a little of it for later.”

When the finished jam finally cooled, I spread some onto a piece of fresh bread.

It tasted exactly as homemade redcurrant jam should.

Sharp.

Sweet.

Bright.

Completely unlike anything from a supermarket.

I stood there rather pleased with myself until I remembered one inconvenient detail.

I had absolutely no idea whether this was my own achievement…

…or whether two Irish grandmothers had quietly possessed me for the afternoon.

Either way, I decided not to ask too many questions.