I had a real rock’n’roll weekend, picking damsons and plums from the garden and turning them into jam. I didn’t know how tricky damsons are to separate from their stones, and spent an age with 2.3kilos of them and a sharp knife on Saturday night. The net result, brown fingers from the fruit. After experimenting, shampoo was best for getting rid of the worst of it.
For future reference, this was my recipe.
2.3k Damsons and 0.7k plums (about 2.8k after stoning)
2.3k jam sugar
about 1.5pts water
I de-stoned the fruit into a bowl and left overnight to macerate in 1.5k sugar. I soaked the stones with bits of flesh still on overnight in about 0.5pints water.
On Sunday morning I simmered the stones in the water for about 15 minutes then put through a sieve to keep any dissolved fruit and the water, all of which I added to the main bulk of fruit with the remaining sugar and 1pt water.
Everything went into a jeely pan in the normal way, and I bought to the boil, stirring to ensure the sugar was dissolved. When it started to boil I simmered for 1.5 hours to get the maximum flavour out of the damsons. I then brought it to a rolling boil until it reached 220F (105C). I made 11 jars of jam, but they were of varying volumes. I can report that it tastes great 🙂
I have a book of jam recipes that my late mother-in-law gave me. It recommends a 60:40 ratio of sugar to fruit (while noting that sugar is subject to rationing…) but I find this far too sweet. Most modern recipes say 50:50 fruit and sugar, but I still find that too sweet. This jam was roughly 45:55 sugar to fruit, and I would prefer less sugar still, but that makes setting trickier.
Incidentally, there are lots of hints and tips about knowing when jam will set, using cold saucers and edge tests from spoons; the safest way, I find, is to use a sugar thermometer.
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