Jam Sessions

Imagine rhubarb jam with chaparral sage honey on a slice of morning toast. Think about the taste of blueberries, blackberries and vanilla beans melded into a sweet dark ambrosia on a bagel. Or a smooth blend of strawberries, raspberries and fresh lavender on
a croissant.

All those taste sensations are offered by the inventive Lennie LaGuire, a former senior-level editor of the Los Angeles Times who started her own artisanal food company a year ago, six months after leaving the newspaper business. As the sole proprietor of Ellelle Kitchen (inspired by her initials), she has filled her days collecting fruits from farmers’ markets throughout the Los Angeles area — as well as from neighbors’ backyards and her own apple, apricot and orange trees in South Pasadena — and dreaming up tantalizing flavor combinations.

LaGuire is putting a modern twist on the time-honored tradition of artisanal jams — handmade concoctions in small, quaintly packaged jars more likely to be found in gourmet food shops than on the highly competitive shelf space of chain groceries like Ralphs or Vons.

It’s a niche shared by E. Waldo Ward & Son in Sierra Madre, which has been crafting its own jams (and bottling other delicate treats like olives) for more than a century. Both businesses are responding to a continuing demand for the often painstaking effort involved. “If somebody wants to buy a single flavor, they can go to any supermarket and find a million brands of raspberry jam,” LaGuire notes. “I work with multiple types of fruits to create a different combination, and it’s a chance to play with flavors. This summer, I’ve done a sour lemon jam with Coachella dates from the desert. The sweetness of dates and sourness of lemons come together in a taste explosion. I think of what’s not just seasonal but what might go together to lift or enlighten a classic.”

LaGuire decided to launch her business just before she left for Paris to study pastry making last July. There she discovered the artistry and experimental élan that French chefs bring to their jams.

Not long ago, LaGuire demonstrated how she creates new flavors at East Pasadena’s Mama’s Kitchen Incubator, the large culinary complex on San Gabriel Boulevard where she rents space for Ellelle. She took Tupperware containers of apricots and raspberries out of refrigerators and poured the contents of each into a separate pot; she boiled the fruit for ten minutes before combining the juices and stirring them in a large copper pan she’d bought in Paris. Then she poured a sample of the resulting sunset-colored liquid onto a small plate she had just removed from a freezer, so she could see how it looked and tasted upon cooling. Running her pinky through the result, LaGuire declared the experiment a success.

“I like the color of it,” she said. “I don’t use very much [sugar] syrup, so it’s on the tart side. I didn’t use any commercial pectin [a component of citrus used as a gelling agent], just fruit. I love the way it has a softer set. It will probably harden a little in the fridge, but it’ll basically stay smooth and liquid. I was hoping for more of a tequila sunrise color, but I’ll take it.”

She arranged six eight-ounce jars, which had been sterilized at 325 degrees, on a nearby aluminum table before carefully pouring in the mixture. Ordinarily, LaGuire creates a case of 24 jars at a time; Ellelle jams sell for $13 per jar for standard flavors and $14 for specialty.

“Her seasonal jam idea is fantastic,” says Kristin Edwards, who carries Ellelle at the Little Flower Candy Co. in Pasadena. “She takes great pride in using local produce. Currently, we’re carrying some of her strawberry-rhubarb jams, which are very popular. Her use of herbs really sets her apart.”

LaGuire’s main local competitor is E. Waldo Ward, which has occupied the same three-acre farm since 1917 and been passed down through four generations of Wards to its current president, Jeff Ward. Ward’s great-grandfather and the company’s founder, Edwin Waldo, migrated to Sierra Madre from New Jersey in 1891 in the hope that the drier climate would cure his tuberculosis. He got the idea for creating artisanal foods from his work as a traveling salesman for the New Jersey-based gourmet food company James P. Smith Co.

Ward’s dream was to make marmalade that would rival Britain’s best (the company currently sells 13 varieties under its own label, including lime and ginger). He started the company in an old redwood barn built in 1902 that is still used for storage. These days, most of the work takes place in another facility built in the 1920s, which houses kettles that have served the Ward family well since the 1950s, as well as “a lot of old equipment and a marmalade splicing machine, really old-fashioned stuff,” Ward says.

The company grows its own fruits and devotes 80 percent of its business to co-packing or packaging and labeling the specialty products of other food companies. Ward estimates the company packs and labels nearly 250 different products, which are distributed largely in the West at such retail outlets as the Pasadena Museum of History Store, Gelson’s and Bristol Farms (the latter two sell Ward’s products under their own labels). A 10-ounce jar of jam runs from $4.80 for guava to $5.90 for wild blueberry.

“We have so many different flavors,” Ward says. “You can make a jam from almost any fruit. We work with all kinds of berries and even tropical fruit. Our wildest creation is probably orange-papaya marmalade.”

In Ward’s view, artisanal foods continue to thrive despite the grim economy because foodies appreciate the results when a business takes the time to get things right. “There really is a hands-on quality, and we’re not compromising with cheaper ingredients like corn syrup,” Ward said. “We use cane sugar like you would at home, boil fruit and use as much local ingredients as we can. The allure of artisanals is the allure of making things the old-fashioned way.”