Gooseberry & Apple Jam Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Do you need to top and tail gooseberries for jam? ›

Gooseberry recipes require something called “topping and tailing”, where we trim the top, the stem and also the tail, where the flower once was.

And it's a simple explanation, ripe gooseberries cause the pectin and sugar to react at setting point to turn pink. If you want your gooseberry jam green, then pick the fruit under ripe! Big Thanks, and here's to Pink Gooseberry jam!

Add pectin.

Whisk a tablespoon of powdered pectin (preferably the no-sugar-needed variety) into the pot of cooking jam. Test for thickness and add another tablespoon if needed. Learn More About Pectin: What's the Deal with Pectin?

The great thing about gooseberry jam is that the gooseberries change in colour, adopting an appetising warm pinkish hue with the intense heat of jam-making. This change is apparently due to the anthocyanins in the gooseberries interacting with metal ions leached from the cooking vessel itself.

The jam will start to turn a pinky red hue as it cooks. Spoon a little jam onto a chilled saucer, leave to cool then run your finger through it. If it's ready it will wrinkle up.

Gooseberries which remain green when ripe will yield a green jam if the fruit and sugar are cooked quickly together. Prolonged boiling results in a red jam. Fully ripe or dessert gooseberries yield a lightly setting pink jam.

Gooseberries don't continue to ripen after they are harvested, so if you want to eat them fresh, pick when ripe. Gooseberries vary in color, so the best way to tell if they are ripe is to squeeze them. If you squeeze them when ripe, the gooseberry will give a little.

Though research on gooseberries specifically is limited, many of the nutrients in these berries have been linked to significant health benefits. These include lower blood sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure levels, as well as a reduced risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and age-related illnesses of the brain.

Preparing jam is about capturing the sweet essence of the fruit while simultaneously cooking it down to the perfect syrupy consistency. Lemon is crucial to balancing those sweet flavors, but it also helps the pectin to firm up the jam.

Does lemon juice thicken jam? ›

Lemon juice contains natural pectin, a substance found in the cell walls of fruits that helps to thicken and set the jam or jelly. Pectin is crucial for achieving the desired consistency and texture in jams and jellies.

Apples: Apples contain natural pectin and can be used to help thicken jams and jellies. Simply peel and core the apples, chop them into small pieces, and add them to the fruit mixture.

Gooseberries. From early summer, symptoms appear on gooseberry bushes as: Powdery grey-white fungal patches on the leaves, which later turn brown. Mildew on the fruits turns brown as it ages.

Gooseberries are naturally high in pectin which makes for an easy jam – all you need is equal quantities of fruit and sugar.

Usually that thin, white film is jelled foam. If your fruit was foamy in the sauce pan and you didn't skim the foam off, or if your mixture had a lot of air in it and you didn't do air releasing before putting the jam in the jars, the foam or tiny air bubbles rise to the top of the jar and form that white film.

The one disadvantage is that, like gooseberries, you need to top and tail jostaberries. But the fruit tends to come away without any stalk (so no tailing) and if you open-freeze the berries the flower ends are easy to nip off while still frozen.

While gooseberries will still fruit without training and pruning, these prickly plants can quickly become tangled and congested, with branches trailing on the ground. This overcrowding makes harvesting difficult and may encourage problems such as mildew.

If you are using frozen gooseberries, you don't need to thaw them before top and tailing, just rub between your fingertips while they are still frozen.