The most expensive jam in the world is made in Bar-le-Duc from red currants hand-seeded with a goose quill.
What makes this product so special is that normally you can't make red currant jam without including an avalanche of unappetising seeds. Extracting the juice to make a jelly is a pretty straightforward business, but a jam contains the skin and flesh of the fruits - a very different animal. So, sometime in the 14th century, local monks had the idea of removing the seeds of red currants before making the jam. One by one, with a goose quill.
Dutriez grabs a couple of quills, cuts the tip with scissors and starts seeding his red currants. Each épépineuse likes to cut her quill in a different way, but the idea is to have a sharp tip and a sort of tube to grab the seeds and remove them, he explains.
Each jar contains 3oz (90gr) of the precious nectar. Dutriez produces 500 kilograms of jam a year (1000 pounds) - that's as much as the market will take.
