The message
from "Mary Fisher" contains these words:
"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'm mindful of a big preserving pan of slowly seething strawberries,
picked (usually) at Tiptree, and myself, with spoon, testing for the
'gel'.

Heaven with Mother's scones, butter and double cream.

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.

Excellent.

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.

There aren't enough hours in the year. If I made marmalade, however much
of it I produced would be gone in a twinkling. As far as marmalade goes
(not very far... Ed.) I'd give Paddington Bear a run for his money...

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.

Sounds good. It's only a few years since I finished using-up all the
jams and marmalade my mother made: some of the pots dated back to the
1950s, and some of the sugar crystals in those were hard as a hard
thing, and the size of sweets.

Microwaving the jars on the very lowest setting was fine, and the jam
became jam again, but a couple of days later it began to form crystals
again.

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 ...

There's no point in using rubbish wine/spirits on good ingredients. I
often put a good Merlot or Shiraz into dishes, and the Lidl Glen Orchy
is quite good enough to put in a decanter. I reserve the cask-strength
15 y.o. Laphroaig and the Penderyn for appreciative topers - er -
tipplers. Quaffers are lucky to get Glen Orchy.

whisper

I have a numbered bottle of single-cask-bottling of Linkwood. I'm saving
it for a special occasion and/or (a) deserving conoisseur(s) innit.

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?

I do, but ATM I haven't got a decent preserving pan. Well, I haven't got
a preserving pan. I molish my own pickles and things though.

Microwave jam is really good, but you can only make so much at a time. I
can make even less as I broke the turntable in the microwave.

--
Rusty
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