Tradition shines like a well worn brass door knob in Nacogdoches, the oldest town in Texas. Here, in the heart of the Pineywoods of East Texas, Lin Monroe learned the traditional art of jam making from her Aunt Jackie. Stirring in the blueberries picked from the fields around Nacogdoches into the open kettles Lin's cooking delighted her family and friends with the handmade goodness of old-fashioned jams and jellies.
Being Texan there is always a call away from the tamer flavors to a more exciting adventure in taste. After moving to Austin, Lin had sampled Jalapeno Jelly and wanted to develop that taste into a bolder more mature experience. Her hot pepper jam was such a hit with her friends that Lin began giving jars of jam as gifts. Her friends urged her to sell it at local Christmas arts and crafts shows. It was well liked and additional orders for more jam came in. Refining her beginning recipe, Lin experimented with the taste sensations of each kind of pepper and how different types of peppers correctly mixed together provided a more enjoyable and satisfactory taste than any single type of pepper could provide. Each pepper has its own unique taste on different parts of the tongue and gives the jam more depth of flavor than is possible with just a jalapeño. Jams also have more flavor than jelly because the whole fruit is used in jam unlike jelly that only uses the juice of the fruit. Many people were unfamiliar with "pepper jam" and began to ask if it was "like that raspberry chipotle sauce," they liked. That gave Lin the idea of adding fruit to the jam and Raspberry Pepper Jam was born. After that Lin developed an more flavors. We believe that jam making is as much of an art as it is a science and love to play with flavors. Austin Pepper Jam is the original "signature" recipe that Lin created using her own selection and measure of peppers.
