Preserving Autumn Fruit as Jams and Chutneys

Making the Most of the Autumn Glut

By mid-September the hedgerows are groaning and the orchard is dropping fruit faster than anyone can eat it. A single mature apple tree can give you 100kg or more in a good year, and the blackberry run along the lane seems to renew itself every time you turn your back. For the smallholder, this is the busiest and most satisfying month of the year — but it is also a race against brown rot, wasps and the first cold snap.

Preserving is how you win that race. A few hours at the stove turns a perishable heap into jars that will still taste of sunshine in February. Jam and chutney need no special equipment beyond a large heavy pan, clean jars and a bit of patience, and they make excellent use of fruit that is too bruised, too small or too sour to eat fresh.

Sorting the Fruit Before You Start

Sort everything first and be ruthless. Discard any fruit with mould or maggot damage, but bruised fruit is perfectly good — just cut away the soft brown patches. Wash berries gently and pick over them for leaf and stalk; blackberries in particular reward a second look, as the little green pips hiding in the hull will not soften with cooking.

Each fruit behaves differently in the pan, which is worth knowing before you commit a whole afternoon to it:

• Apples — high in pectin, especially cookers, so they set reliably and add body to other fruits. Peel and core for a smooth jam; leave skins in for chutney.
• Plums and damsons — good natural pectin, sharp flavour, and they colour beautifully. Crack a few stones and tie them in muslin for extra set and a hint of almond.
• Blackberries — low in pectin and seedy. Pair them with apple at roughly two parts berry to one part apple for a jam that actually sets.
• Windfalls and crab apples — ideal for chutney, where their sharpness and natural pectin do the work for you.

Sterilising Jars Properly

This is the step people skip, and it is the one that spoils more batches than anything else. A jar that is not properly sterilised will grow mould within a fortnight, no matter how good your jam is.

Wash jars and lids in hot soapy water, rinse well, then sterilise by one of these methods:

• Oven: stand clean, dry jars upside down on a baking tray and heat at 140°C for 15 minutes. Leave them in the oven, door ajar, until you fill them.
• Dishwasher: a hot rinse cycle works well if you time it to finish as your jam reaches setting point.
• Boiling: immerse jars in a deep pan of water and boil for 10 minutes, then drain upside down on a clean teatowel.

Avoid reusing lids that have already sealed a jar — the rubber gasket will not grip properly a second time. New lids are cheap; lost jam is not.

Getting Jam to Set

The classic proportion is equal weights of prepared fruit and sugar, which suits most autumn fruit and gives a reliable, well-keeping jam. Warm the sugar in a low oven first so it dissolves quickly and you do not boil off the fruit's flavour while waiting.

Layer fruit and sugar in a preserving pan and leave for an hour or two to draw out the juice, then bring slowly to the boil, stirring until every grain has dissolved. Only then turn up the heat and boil hard. Stir often, and skim the scum from the surface with a slotted spoon.

After about ten minutes, test for a set: drop a teaspoon of jam onto a chilled saucer, leave it a minute, and push it with your finger. If it wrinkles, it is ready; if it just runs, boil for another three minutes and test again. A jam thermometer reading 104–105°C tells you the same thing. Pour into hot jars, cover with a wax disc, seal, and leave to cool undisturbed overnight.

Chutney, the Slow Simmer

Chutney is more forgiving than jam and a better home for gluts. There is no setting point to chase — you simply cook it down until thick. A workable base for a 2kg batch of fruit is 450g soft brown sugar, 600ml vinegar and 225g onions, with ginger, mustard seed, chilli or cloves to taste.

Use a stainless steel pan; aluminium and unlined copper react with the vinegar and taint the result. Simmer uncovered for one to two hours, stirring often as it thickens, until a wooden spoon drawn through leaves a clear channel that fills slowly. Pot as for jam.

Chutney is best left to mature for six to eight weeks before eating, by which time the vinegar will have mellowed and the spices will have married.

Labelling and Storing Each Batch

Label everything the day you make it, because December-you will not remember which jar was the spiced damson and which was the plain plum. Write the fruit, the date, and any variation worth repeating — the sugar weight, the spices, how long it took to reach setting point. A cheap notebook kept in the kitchen does the job as well as any label.

Store in a cool, dark, dry place. Jam keeps for at least a year, chutney for two or three; both will hold their colour better away from light. Check jars after a fortnight — any that have mould under the lid or a loose seal should be opened, inspected and used promptly rather than left on the shelf.

Come January, with the wind rattling the greenhouse and nothing much to harvest, a shelf of your own preserves is a fine thing indeed.