The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves: 200 Classic and Contemporary Recipes Showcasing the Fabulous Flavors of Fresh Fruits

The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves represents decades of study and experimentation in making fruit preserves in traditional ways, without packaged pectin and sometimes even without added sweeteners. This book will broaden your view both of ways to use fruits and of what fruits are worth using. The 225 recipes include jams, jellies, marmalades, preserves, conserves, syrups, shrubs, curds, flavored vinegars, and fruit pastes. Although you’ll find plenty of recipes here for the most popular fruits–strawberries, blackberries, apples, plums, and so on–many of the fruits covered are rarely sold in markets but are easy to grow (black and red currants, medlars, and haskaps, for example) or to forage (green walnuts, cherry plums, and haws). Easy-to-find tropical fruits–bananas, coconuts, mangoes, papayas–are included as well. For fruit lovers, the book is truly a joy. But The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves goes beyond fruit. There are also recipes for flowers (roses and violets) and for nuts (walnuts, chestnuts, and hazelnuts). The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves makes it easy to decide how to use your produce, because the book is organized alphabetically by fruit name (flowers and nuts get a chapter each). Each chapter begins with a discussion of the subject–its history, its cultivars, where and how it grows, and how to harvest and preserve it. Experienced as well as novice preservers are sure to learn from the book’s first chapter, “Preserver’s Primer.” It not only reviews the canning process but explains the theory of making gelled preserves and provides recipes for homemade pectin. No other modern guide to making sweet preserves is as comprehensive and authoritative as this one.