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beware parsnips
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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 Direct reply to: horrid dot squeak snailything zetnet point co period uk Separator in search of a sig |
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