The Cottage Smallholder

I dunno, pectin is a bit of a mystery to me, except that I was advised to boil my wild plums, then let them cool before taking the pits out, partly for ease of de-pitting, partly to get pectin in the mix.

I've always had the impression, for good or ill, that crabs are high in pectin, so figured I'd shove some crabs in an apple jelly, but maybe crabs are just high in core and skin compared to fruit.

If anyone could post knowledgeably about pectin, I'd be most obliged.

David

Many thanks, that was helpful.

Looks like the less sweet/ripe wild plums I've been using for my jam are ideal, and I might have got over-confident with them to the point where other fruits will prove a let-down. My evening primrose jelly didn't set nearly as well.

Hedgerow apples/crabs also look ideal, so perhaps I shall take the easy way out and do some apple jelly, too, and confine myself to plum and apple for jam in future.

And maybe bramble jelly - that also looks ideal.

I didn't think my experiment with dewberries was as successful as my blackberry jelly - not quite so well set, and not as flavoursome, even though I prefer the taste of raw dewberry to that of blackberry.

Maybe they were sweeter and riper than the brambles I used.

The only other wild fruit I could get in sufficient quantity in a good year would be wimberry/bilberry, and they take a lot of time to pick and are so good for other purposes that I'd need a real glut to use them for jam.

David