Another week of raspberry jam tests. (Thank god my father sent me a giant box of english muffins over the holidays!) This time, I compared seven raspberry jam recipes that used commercial pectin (five liquid, two powder) from six different recipe books. The ratio of fruit to sugar ranged from 2 (Wild Jams) to 0.5 (Well-Preserved).

I chose three jams to make:
#1 — liquid pectin, fruit to sugar ratio of 2, no added acid
#2 — liquid pectin, fruit to sugar ratio of 1, added acid
#3 — powdered pectin, fruit to sugar ratio of 0.7, added acid

And, the results are…

1) I don’t know what kind of raspberries the Wild Jams folks use, but a fruit to sugar ratio of 2 does not work. It makes raspberry syrup. After waiting 24 hours without a set, I emptied the jars, added sugar to achieve a ratio of 1, added some lemon juice, and boiled it all for 4 minutes. This achieved a perfect set. (and I saved a jar of the syrup to eat over vanilla ice cream!)

2) I can’t figure out why all the liquid pectin recipes say to boil for one minute. I found that I need to boil for 3-4 minutes or the jam doesn’t set. Batch #2 had to be emptied 24 hours later and boiled for 3 mins. After processing, and waiting 24 hours, I achieved a good set. Unlike powdered or homemade pectin, the liquid pectin jams seem to take longer to set. I was convinced I had 5 more jars of syrup until the next day.

3) Powdered pectin makes a lot more foam. See the jars to the left. I should have skimmed the foam before I canned the jam.

4) The more the jam is boiled, the darker it becomes. I noticed significant differences in batches that were re-boiled.

I have a pound of Pomona’s Pectin on the way — this is the pectin that uses calcium to set instead of sugar and acid. So, you can use as much or as little sugar as you’d like. Sounds fabulous to me.

This week, I’ve been researching options for producing jams commercially. If I want to sell jam at a reasonable price, I can’t keep buying my sugar at Whole Foods and my jars at the local Ace hardware store — I need to go wholesale. After much google-searching, I found a nearby jar company and a nearby bulk organic sugar company — both are in Lancaster, PA so I imagine I’ll be making a trip up to Amish country soon so that I can save on shipping.

By “cold-emailing” a dozen local food producers, I also found a local commercial kitchen whose owner enjoys incubating new food entrepreneurs. I’m going to do a test-run in a few weeks to see how much jam I can produce per hour.

Finally, I read a fabulous and inspiring (and perhaps the only?) jam memoir by a woman who owned a local jam business on Cape Cod (my “home”-Cape!). It has a few recipes, explains some of the ways she scaled up production, and, best of all, shares her reflections on the seasons of and reasons for preserving local fruits.

I spent my new year’s holiday making jam — five different varieties of raspberry jam — and we held the first Half Pint Harvest taste-test on New Year’s Day. All the jams were made from the same raspberries (Whole Foods, frozen), but the type and amount of sugar and pectin varied. The options were:

1) no pectin, 50% sugar
2) with homemade pectin, 25% sugar
3) with homemade pectin, 25% sugar + honey
4) with homemade pectin, 25% sugar + honey, no hot water bath
5) with homemade pectin, 25% sugar, added cranberries and orange
6) a popular organic store-bought raspberry jam

The winner: Cranberry-Rasberry (#5)
Everyone liked the cranberry orange variety (#5) the best, but that doesn’t tell us much expect that this group liked more complex jams.
The raspberry-only winner: Split decision between #2 and #3
Of the pure rasberry varieties, the group was split between #2 and #3. Some like the “flowery” flavor of the honeyed jam, while others like the “bright” flavor of the low-sugar variety.

The losers: Everyone thought #1 was too sweet, and that #6 was too runny. Variety #4 was generally judged too thick (though one panelist preferred this consistency, and the honey-lovers liked the flavor).

A couple notes:
– Using honey instead of sugar usually results in a softer gel. I replaced half of the sugar with honey, and noticed no significant difference in consistency between #2 and #3.
– I tried to test the effect of less boiling (no water bath, just hot fill seal) on one jar of the honeyed jam. We did find a consistency change (the water bath seemed to reduce the gelling), but couldn’t detect a flavor difference. The honey was a bit overpowering, though, so I might try this test again with just fruit, sugar, and pectin.