The morning of the Grand Tasting, Puddle's Famous Jam Factory smelled like something brilliant was about to happen.
Otto could smell it from the car park — sweet and tangy and warm, rolling out of the tall brick chimney in great pink clouds of steam. He ran ahead of Gran through the big iron gates, past the rows of copper vats bubbling away, past Benny the foreman in his enormous rubber apron, past the wall of glass jars catching the morning light like a stained-glass window made entirely of jam.
"Don't touch anything," called Gran from somewhere behind him.
Otto touched everything.
He had been coming to Gran's factory every summer since he was small enough to sit in the jam funnel — not that anyone had ever let him sit in the jam funnel. But today was different. Today was the Grand Tasting. Twelve famous judges from the National Guild of Preserves were arriving at noon, and if Puddle's Famous Strawberry Jam won the Golden Spoon, Gran had promised to paint the factory gold. The whole factory. Otto had designed a flag.
The Great Hall had been decorated with a banner that stretched from one end to the other: PUDDLE'S FAMOUS STRAWBERRY JAM — FORTY YEARS OF PERFECTION.
"Forty years," said Gran, beaming up at it. She had flour on her cheek and jam on her elbow, and she looked exactly like what she was: the happiest jam-maker in the country.
"Can I try some?" said Otto.
Gran handed him a spoon and pointed at the nearest jar.
Otto dipped in. He put the spoon in his mouth. He thought very carefully.
"Gran," he said. "This doesn't taste like strawberry."
Gran waved her hand. "Of course it does. It's always tasted like that."
"But strawberry is sweet and kind of flowery. This is—" Otto tried to find the right word. "This is sharp. And a bit spicy. And it sort of tingles."
"That's the jam," said Gran firmly.
"Right, but—"
"It's strawberry jam, Otto. It says so on the jar."
Otto looked at the jar. It did say strawberry. It said strawberry in big red letters with a picture of three strawberries and a little ribbon that said FORTY YEARS OF PERFECTION. He looked at the jam. It was definitely pinkish. He looked at the spoon. He put it back in his mouth.
Definitely not strawberry.
He went to find Benny.
Benny was in the machine room, polishing the Big Number One — the enormous copper press that had been making Puddle's jam since the very beginning, forty years ago, before Gran had even opened the factory to the public. It was the size of a small house. It had fourteen dials and seven levers and a brass nameplate that said OLD FAITHFUL in letters someone had scratched in with a nail.
"Benny," said Otto, "what does Old Faithful actually make?"
Benny looked up. He had a very large moustache and eyebrows to match. "Strawberry," he said.
"Are you sure?"
"I've worked here thirty-five years, son. I've never made anything but strawberry."
"Could I look at the back of the machine?"
Benny stared at him. "The back?"
"Yes. The back part. Where the settings are."
"Nobody goes round the back of Old Faithful. There's a drip back there, and the floor's slippery, and besides — the settings were set by Gran's father forty years ago and nobody's touched them since because the jam comes out perfect every single time and that's that."
Otto went round the back of Old Faithful.
There was indeed a drip. There was indeed a slippery floor. There was also a small metal panel on a hinge, which had rusted shut but opened with a firm knock. Behind the panel was a row of dials, and a placard, and a label, and the label said — in faded but perfectly readable handwriting — RHUBARB AND GINGER.
Otto stood very still.
Forty years. Every jar. Not a single strawberry.
He walked back out from behind Old Faithful and found Gran and Benny and said, quite calmly, "Gran. You've been making rhubarb and ginger jam for forty years."
The room went very quiet.
Gran said: "I beg your pardon?"
Otto explained about the panel. He explained about the dial. He explained about the label in Gran's father's handwriting, and how it seemed that forty years ago, someone had prepared the machine for a batch of rhubarb and ginger, put the strawberry brand labels on the jars by mistake, and then — well. Nobody had ever checked. The jam was delicious. The business was booming. What was there to check?
Gran sat down on an empty crate.
Benny sat down on another one.
"The judges arrive in three hours," said Benny.
"The banner says strawberry," said Gran.
"All twelve thousand jars say strawberry," said Benny.
They both looked at Otto as though somehow this was his fault.
"We could make real strawberry jam," said Otto. "We have the fruit. We have the machines."
They did. They scrambled. Benny fired up the Number Two press, Otto hauled crates of strawberries from the cold store, and Gran herself operated the controls, which she had not done in fifteen years. The factory roared and bubbled and steamed, and one hour later they had four test jars of brand-new, perfectly genuine, absolutely authentic strawberry jam.
Gran tasted it.
Her face did something complicated.
She passed the spoon to Benny. Benny tasted it. His moustache drooped.
She passed the spoon to Otto. Otto tasted it.
"Oh," he said.
It was fine. It was perfectly fine. It tasted exactly like strawberry jam, which is to say it tasted like every strawberry jam Otto had ever bought at a shop or spread on toast or stirred into yoghurt. It was sweet and floral and nice.
But it wasn't the same.
Their jam — the jam in the twelve thousand jars, the jam that had won three regional prizes, the jam that Benny's mother had written to ask for the recipe of, the jam that people drove sixty kilometres to buy at the factory gate — that jam had something. It had a kick. A warmth. A little zing that crept up at the end and made you want another spoonful immediately.
Gran looked at the banner.
"We can't call it strawberry," she said slowly. "That would be wrong."
"We could call it something else," said Otto.
"It's already labelled."
"We could put stickers on."
Gran was quiet for a moment. Then she stood up, and she got that look on her face — the one she got when she was about to do something wonderfully stubborn.
"Get me a marker pen," she said.
At noon exactly, the twelve judges from the National Guild of Preserves filed into the Great Hall. The banner had been changed. It now read: PUDDLE'S FAMOUS ORIGINAL JAM — FORTY YEARS OF SECRET RECIPE.
Every jar had a small golden sticker: NOW REVEALED.
The judges tasted. They deliberated. They tasted again.
The chairman of the Guild, a serious woman with half-moon glasses and jam on her notepad, leaned forward and asked Gran what was in it.
Gran smiled. "That," she said, "is the secret."
They won the Golden Spoon.
Otto painted the flag himself that evening, standing on a ladder in the warm summer dark while Gran held the torch and Benny held the ladder. It said FORTY YEARS AND COUNTING, and in the corner, very small, in Otto's own handwriting: it was rhubarb and ginger.
Someone had to remember.