Val’s treats hard to beat

By Jade Lawton
VICTORIA’S best jams, jellies and marmalades come out of Val Vale’s Pakenham kitchen.
Mrs Vale has taken out two first prizes at the Royal Melbourne Show, in the ‘one person’s work preserves’ and ‘collection of jellies’ categories.
She impressed the judges with her collection of apple jelly, melon, lemon and ginger jam, lime and lemon marmalade, rhubarb relish, mustard pickles and beetroot chutney.
The award-winning spreads are made even more astonishing given Mrs Vale said she had no tastebuds, but made up for her lack of taste with a secret weapon.
“They’re all old recipes,” she said. “I’ve got a book that was written about 1917 called the ‘Goulburn Cookery Book’. I think I found it in an op shop or garage sale; I’ve had it for a few decades. It’s a nice little book. I don’t eat them myself as I’m diabetic and have no tastebuds whatsoever.”
Husband Graeme is the official taster.
Mrs Vale said she last entered the Royal in 1988 when she took home a first and three second prizes out of five categories.
“I went down last year and didn’t like the look of the preserves, so I entered again,” she said.
At one stage, Mrs Vale was entering her preserves in agricultural shows in Pakenham, Berwick, Warragul, Leongatha, Lang Lang and Bunyip.
She regularly scores a clean sweep and has many rosettes attesting to the tastiness of her preserves, but some of her competitors may be relieved to hear that Mrs Vale has scaled back her show schedule to just the Berwick and Pakenham shows.
“There’s not a lot of time between all the shows and some of the preserves take a lot of time – the melon, lemon and ginger jam take more than 24 hours to make,” she said.
“I didn’t want to win all the time – I just want to keep the shows going.”
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