Making Jam
Grandma Wilhelmina Mary Gordon, my maternal grandmother, had a jam making season. Our first house was at 15 Vine Street, Moonee Ponds, just down the road from the famous Dame Edna Everage. It was grandmother’s home and she had lived there all of her life. It was a wooden workman’s cottage built in the very poor days at the end of the nineteenth century.
The house was eighteen feet wide and ran the width of the block except for a narrow sideway two feet six wide down on one side, which then was joined by the wall of the next house. Nana had lived alone for a number of years and it was a concern of my mother and my aunt that she was becoming very forgetful and it would be good if the young married couple could move in with her. I was still a student at university and the low cost accommodation was a great boon to us, particularly as both our church and the university were not far away.
We lived there for the next two and a half years with the lounge in the centre doubling as our common room, my study and our family room together. Very soon I had some bookcases moved in, a desk, typewriter and it was here that I used to counsel many of the young boys that I had in our Youth Club and the first of the boys that came on probation.
Living with my Nana was very difficult for my young bride. Nana’s memory was failing, and although her daughters had not seen it and I was too young and inexperienced to realize it, she was well advanced in a stage of dementia. Very soon we began to notice a lot more symptoms than the loss of memory. Each December she would bring home from the greengrocer’s large boxes of berries and a huge bag of sugar and start mixing pounds of jam on her stove, or bottling dozens of bottles of preserved apricots.
Whenever I would ask her why she needed so many she would always reply, “If you have a large family you must do the bottling! It is jam time now, and I’ve got to get the preserves in.” She had so much happiness making jams and preserving fruit even though she no longer had children round about to eat them, that I took to a rather tricky subterfuge to help her. As soon as her preserving cupboard became full, and she started to complain she had nowhere else to put the bottles of preserves, I would sneak out bottles of preserves and jams and give them to deserving people in the community whenever I visited, or else to some of the ladies from the church who ran a street stall for Missions.
Nana was never the wiser about where they went but noticing the cupboards were down by a few bottles would make comments about how she would soon need to get some more sugar in because “those kids have nearly finished all of the jam”. When the time came for us to leave, she suffered a stroke and we rushed her to hospital and after a short time she passed away.
Making jam is a grandmotherly thing to do, but many younger married couples are missing out these days. At the moment, Beverley has the biggest pot out and on the stove, the biggest ham bone from the Christmas ham now cut into three, plus the split peas and some fresh veggies from the garden, all bubbling away in what will be the most delicious pea and ham soup.
But soon it will be the turn of jam. But these days we no longer use the biggest pot and the largest amount of fruit we can pick for a macro-jam making session with scores of glass bottles all sterilized and ready.
Some of our children gave us a bread maker which also can work as a jam maker, and that is good for micro-jam sessions. We pick just as much fruit as we want, and then make up in three hours just half a dozen bottles of jam, which keeps us in fresh, locally grown jam.
When the blackberries, raspberries and strawberries have finished then the apricots come in. Then the persimmons, guavas, citrus (for marmalade), grapes (for jelly), figs, cherries, nectarines, peaches and passion fruit, and plums, (but only that fruit that we have at the time), and so on throughout the year of micro-jam making sessions. As Goldilocks said, “Not too much, not too little, Just right!”
A little bit of effort goes a long way and jam making with a bread maker seems to be relatively easy (at least to the eyes of the one who is not doing it) and most rewarding. In the olden days making jam involved buckets of fruit and hours of work. Not any more. Our ancestors were making the best use of all the fruit they had. Every blackberry had to be picked by children with purple hands and mouths, and every apricot taken from the tree.
But today, Blackberries are consulted on trains and busses and used for receiving and sending messages, and not for being boiled and made into jam. For today jam-making is all about flavour rather than saving money. Most people don’t really eat enough jam for that to be a factor. But taste is a different matter.
If you have the fruit, the time and the storage space, it is worthwhile. It is a well received gift when you give a pot away. And from what I have observed at home the task itself is most enjoyable. Micro-jam making will give you half a dozen pots of jam which take up little space, and will keep you going for weeks if you have kids who love jam, or months if you have adults who like jam.
You don’t have to go to all the trouble of using fresh fruit if you want to save time and effort. Dried fruits, particularly apricots, make up into delicious jam with very little effort at all. Commercial jam-setters are another worthwhile addition if you are using very ripe fruit. It is the pectin that helps the jam or jelly to set, and there is more of it in slightly unripe fruit, although, as you can imagine, the richest flavour is going to come from fully ripe fruit.
You can, however, use a quarter under-ripe fruit to boost your pectin levels naturally. This is obviously easier if you are making jam from your own fruit. Jam-setter is necessary if you are buying your fruit.
The rules for jam making are fairly simple. If it is your own fruit and you haven’t sprayed the trees then you don’t need to wash it unless it is dusty. Check the fruit over for signs of fruit fly.
Weigh out fruit and sugar according to the recipe. If you are using commercial pectin then read the instructions on the back of the packet. Rub the pan with butter to stop any jam sticking to the pan. I remember my Nana putting an iron ring in the bottom of the pan to stop fruit from sticking.
Cook the fruit until soft. Warm the sugar first (this makes it dissolve easier), then slowly add it while stirring with a wooden spoon. Stir occasionally so there is no sticking to the pan. That wooden spoon stained by the fruit is your graduation prize to be left on display as a sign to all of your proficiency in the kitchen.
Bring your fruit mixture slowly to boiling point and as the sugar is dissolving give it a good stir. (You can get sugar with pectin added these days or use just the pectin powder). It is very important to cook over a slow simmer at this stage. Mash the fruit with a wooden spoon while cooking and stir frequently to stop it catching. When it reaches boiling point you can decrease the heat and continue to stir but not too quickly.
With grapes, seeds and skin will float to the surface and you can scoop them off, or wait until later and put them through a sieve.
Nana used to start early in the morning. After washing the fruit she dried it on old towels. Then, while the fruit dried, she sterilized the jars with boiling water. Using a small jug, she poured the jam into the heated jars. Each jar was then sealed with a wet cellophane sphere and a rubber band. She also used paraffin wax, but that did not always give a good seal, and any air getting in would allow mould to start. Beverley uses sterilized lids that screw down tight, and as the hot jam cools it becomes completely airtight.
Later the jars are labeled and dated. Inside are the most delicious flavours for hot toast you can imagine.
So many mothers in earlier days discovered the joy of work, of cooking, cleaning and washing, planting and harvesting vegetables, picking and bottling fruit, cutting and arranging flowers, baking biscuits and cakes and, of course, making delicious jam. So many young women these days are at work, paying off the mortgage so they do not have the time for those tasks.
But if you can make the time, use the bread maker for a micro-jam making session. The kids will think you are marvelous and your friends will think you are a “super-woman” when you have a pot of homemade jam in the pantry. Or surprise them with a delightful gift when you are invited out for dinner or to give to family and friends at Christmas. Don’t forget to top off your gift with a piece of check cloth over the lid, tied with a bow of ribbon.
Jams, jellies, preserves, and marmalades can be prepared with little technology. This made them popular among earlier generations of women and slowly jam making is making a come back today. Try it!
Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.