"Rusty Hinge 2" wrote in message
k...

| You *CAN* use citric acid, but IME it tastes of lemon.
|
| rant
|
| And it's added to most commercial jams, and ruins their flavour.
|
| /rant

Just think how sickly they would be without it!

There are natural acids in fruit, and the citric acid is added to set
the sugar without too much effort.

Um. It's not a matter of 'setting the sugar'! It's said that it extracts the
pectin from the fruit but a lot of fruit has so little pectin that ... well
never mind.

I make ALL our jams and marmalades and have done so decades. I've never,
ever, used citric acid in powder or fruit form, nor bottled or pectin
extracted by me from apples. It's not necessary. Jam doesn't HAVE to be like
a jelly, it just needs to hold itself together well enough to be able to use
a knife to extract it from the jar rather than the spoon. My test used to be
to invert the jar of cold jam for a few seconds, if it didn't fall or ooze
out it was fine.

Some jams (and marmalades) are so
hard that when you mine a lump from the jar and try to spread it on a
slice, the progress of the jam heaps-up a pile of butter before it.

You shouldn't buy it then, make your own. It's easy and far, far better.

I used to make a marmalade with honey, to sell. It was very popular but for
various reasons I stopped selling it. I have boxes full of lovely mature
marmalade which will probably see us out. (Un)fortunately the sugar in it
has crystallised into large, tasty lumps which we love. An 8oz jar lasts us
for many weeks, thus giving time for the crystallisation to continue to the
bottom of the jar.

Licious.

Frank Cooper's Oxford Marmalade is a case in point. I unforget it how it
was when I was a young brat: proper marmalade, which could sneak off the
side of your toast if you were unwary. In order to make the modern block
of stuff usable, I have to heat it almost to boiling-point and add half
of its original volume of fluid. I nominate a cheap malt whisky (such as
Lidl's Glen Orchy), along with some (half a cup) thinly-sliced
crystallised ginger, pre-soaked in aforsaid malt.

OK, fair's fair, I buy it now simply because I can add so much whisky
innit.

You could make your own marmalade with whisky but I'd prefer to use
something better than paint stripper. But there again I use 30yo Armagnac
when I flambé a steak ...

Mary
p.s. so good to see that you use butter instead of something produced by men
in white coats. Why not enhance it with your own produce?