Elizabeth Madden regularly puts students from the French Pastry School to work in the Oak Park commercial kitchen where she makes her Rare Bird Preserves.
But of course one day of instruction isn’t enough to launch a career in jam making. “The French Pastry School is amazing, but they kind of just give you the hint,” Madden says. So she began her own independent research, first diving into the books of Alsatian pastry chef Christine Ferber, internationally known as the “queen of confitures.” Ferber uses only the most pristine seasonal fruit she can find, and she rejects the use of commercial pectin in favor of extracting it from fruit herself, using an apple jelly to thicken and set the fruit.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Madden started small, making only about 60 jars of each of four or five flavors in late 2006. Back then she was working as a pastry chef at Trotter’s to Go, and when one day she put out a sample jar of the fig-Earl Grey, within an hour she’d sold about a dozen. Her manager asked her to go home and get more, but she’d already sold the rest of her inventory—70 jars—to a single customer who planned to give them out as holiday presents.
And maybe that’s relaxing enough. “I don’t usually have music or anything playing,” she says. “I like to work very quietly. I enjoy that solitude. I did grow up in a huge family in which there was chaos constantly, so if you want to read some psychological thing into it, I guess everything is so crazy and it’s like a little safe haven for me.”
