Condiments
Sweet cherry jam, without gelling sugar
Sweet cherries and sour cherries need two different recipes, because acidity and pectin change, the two factors that make jam set. This version is calibrated for sweet cherries: grated apple and lemon juice compensate for what is missing, without gelling sugar, with the cold-plate test deciding when it is ready.
Method
- Pit the cherries over a deep bowl, collecting the juice that drips out. Cut about half of the fruit in half and leave the rest whole: the halves bind sooner, the whole ones give pieces the teaspoon can find something in.
- Put the cherries, collected juice, sugar, grated apple and lemon juice in a wide stainless steel pot. Cover and leave to macerate in the refrigerator from four hours to overnight: the sugar draws out the water and saves you cooking later.
- Before turning on the heat, put three saucers in the freezer. Boil the jars and lids for ten minutes and let them dry upside down on a clean tea towel, without wiping them with a cloth.
- Bring slowly to a boil over medium heat, stirring until the sugar is completely dissolved, and skim off the foam that rises. If you are using vanilla, split the pod lengthwise and add it to the pot now.
- Turn up the heat and cook for 20-25 minutes, stirring often. The target is 104-105 °C: the bubbles become slower and larger.
- Turn off the heat and do the cold saucer test: spoon a teaspoon of jam onto the frozen saucer, put it back in the freezer for thirty seconds and then run a finger through it. If the surface wrinkles and the groove stays, it is ready.
- If the groove closes up immediately, turn the heat back on and continue in three-minute bursts, repeating the test each time with a clean saucer.
- Remove the vanilla pod. If you are using amaretto, pour it in now and let it cook for one minute, the time it takes for the alcohol to evaporate and only the aroma to remain.
- Fill the hot jars up to five millimetres from the rim, close immediately and then leave to cool upright.
- Once cold, check that the lid has sunk in: if it stays domed, that jar goes in the refrigerator and is eaten first. Write the type of cherry and the date on the label.
Minnelea products for this recipe
The preserves used in this recipe.
Minnelea
Extra Black Blueberry Jam – Award-Winning Artisan
€8,90
Minnelea
Sweet Awakening Kit – 6 Artisan Jams
€39,00
• Sweet cherry (Prunus avium) and sour cherry (Prunus cerasus) are two different species, not two flavors: pH 3,8-4,5 versus 3,2-3,5, acidity 0,5% versus 1,5-2%, pectin 0,2-0,4% versus 0,4-0,7%. Gelling needs pectin, acid and sugar together.
• That is why the quantities change: sweet cherries need 550-600 g sugar per kilo of already pitted fruit plus the juice of two lemons; sour cherries need 700-750 g and at most the juice of half a lemon. Exactly the opposite, and it is the step almost every recipe skips.
• Sweet cherry without corrections gives at most a thick pancake sauce: you bring in pectin from outside with a large grated tart apple with its skin, with the yellow peel of an untreated lemon, or with 100 ml redcurrant or gooseberry juice per kilo, which also adds acidity and color. If you do not want apple pieces in the jar, tie the peels and cores of two apples in gauze and remove the bundle at the end of cooking.
• Gelling sugar is not needed here: you lose predictability, because you decide with the cold-plate test instead of counting four minutes, and you gain a jam that tastes of cherry rather than sweetness, with a softer but firm set on bread.
• Pitting one kilo by hand takes half an hour; with plier-style pitter, ten minutes. From three kilos upward, the model with hopper and tray is worth it, even if it bruises the fruit, because for jam that does not matter. Alternatively, place the cherry on the neck of an empty bottle and push the stone out with a stick, or use an opened S-shaped paper clip, which works very well on sour cherries.
• Work in the sink, in a deep bowl and with an apron: the juice splashes everywhere. On fabrics, rinse it immediately with boiling water before soap, because soap sets the stain.
• Cherry stones contain amygdalin, which if the stone is broken or kept for a long time in a warm, damp environment can release hydrocyanic acid: do not break them and do not leave them infusing for hours in hot jam. A whole swallowed stone passes through the intestine without opening. For the bitter almond note, amaretto or two drops of bitter almond flavor are better.
• The red comes from anthocyanins, sensitive to time, temperature and metal: cook in stainless steel or enamelled cast iron, because copper and bare aluminium gray everything, use a wide pot (more evaporation, shorter cooking, more red in the jar) and do not skimp on the lemon, which fixes the color.
• The cold-plate test is always done with the heat off: on the stove the jam keeps cooking while you evaluate it. Three small plates in the freezer before starting are enough for three attempts.
• Frozen cherries work well and are often sour cherries, hard to find fresh: account for 10% more cooking because of thawing water and thaw them over a colander, then cook the collected juice too.
• The four-hour or overnight maceration is not included in the times above: it is passive time in the refrigerator and serves precisely to shorten the real cooking.
• Storage: jars and lids boiled for ten minutes and left to dry upside down on a kitchen towel, without wiping them. Properly closed, they keep twelve months in a cool, dark pantry; once opened, refrigerate and consume within one week. On the label, also write the cherry type, not just “cherries”: in eight months you will not remember.
• Allergens: none in the basic ingredients. Amaretto adds alcohol and comes from almonds or apricot kernels, so the version with liqueur should not be offered to anyone allergic to nuts.
• Variations: with sour cherries, go up to 700 g sugar per kilo, use the juice of half a lemon, remove the apple and cook 15-20 minutes, stirring more carefully because they stick to the bottom. Amaretto: three tablespoons per kilo at the end of cooking with one minute of boiling, four with sour cherries. Vanilla: half a split bean from the start, which softens the acidic edges of sour cherries and gives depth to sweet ones; extract is fine, but off the heat, one teaspoon.
A Minnelea recipe built around Extra Black Blueberry Jam: we do not make cherry jam, because in Cilento cherry is not a serious crop and we work only the fruit from the hills around us. Black blueberry is the closest jar in character - dark, with the same balance between sweet and acid, no added pectin and a short ingredient list - and we cook it under vacuum at low temperature precisely to work around the color problem described above, something that cannot be replicated on a home stove.
• That is why the quantities change: sweet cherries need 550-600 g sugar per kilo of already pitted fruit plus the juice of two lemons; sour cherries need 700-750 g and at most the juice of half a lemon. Exactly the opposite, and it is the step almost every recipe skips.
• Sweet cherry without corrections gives at most a thick pancake sauce: you bring in pectin from outside with a large grated tart apple with its skin, with the yellow peel of an untreated lemon, or with 100 ml redcurrant or gooseberry juice per kilo, which also adds acidity and color. If you do not want apple pieces in the jar, tie the peels and cores of two apples in gauze and remove the bundle at the end of cooking.
• Gelling sugar is not needed here: you lose predictability, because you decide with the cold-plate test instead of counting four minutes, and you gain a jam that tastes of cherry rather than sweetness, with a softer but firm set on bread.
• Pitting one kilo by hand takes half an hour; with plier-style pitter, ten minutes. From three kilos upward, the model with hopper and tray is worth it, even if it bruises the fruit, because for jam that does not matter. Alternatively, place the cherry on the neck of an empty bottle and push the stone out with a stick, or use an opened S-shaped paper clip, which works very well on sour cherries.
• Work in the sink, in a deep bowl and with an apron: the juice splashes everywhere. On fabrics, rinse it immediately with boiling water before soap, because soap sets the stain.
• Cherry stones contain amygdalin, which if the stone is broken or kept for a long time in a warm, damp environment can release hydrocyanic acid: do not break them and do not leave them infusing for hours in hot jam. A whole swallowed stone passes through the intestine without opening. For the bitter almond note, amaretto or two drops of bitter almond flavor are better.
• The red comes from anthocyanins, sensitive to time, temperature and metal: cook in stainless steel or enamelled cast iron, because copper and bare aluminium gray everything, use a wide pot (more evaporation, shorter cooking, more red in the jar) and do not skimp on the lemon, which fixes the color.
• The cold-plate test is always done with the heat off: on the stove the jam keeps cooking while you evaluate it. Three small plates in the freezer before starting are enough for three attempts.
• Frozen cherries work well and are often sour cherries, hard to find fresh: account for 10% more cooking because of thawing water and thaw them over a colander, then cook the collected juice too.
• The four-hour or overnight maceration is not included in the times above: it is passive time in the refrigerator and serves precisely to shorten the real cooking.
• Storage: jars and lids boiled for ten minutes and left to dry upside down on a kitchen towel, without wiping them. Properly closed, they keep twelve months in a cool, dark pantry; once opened, refrigerate and consume within one week. On the label, also write the cherry type, not just “cherries”: in eight months you will not remember.
• Allergens: none in the basic ingredients. Amaretto adds alcohol and comes from almonds or apricot kernels, so the version with liqueur should not be offered to anyone allergic to nuts.
• Variations: with sour cherries, go up to 700 g sugar per kilo, use the juice of half a lemon, remove the apple and cook 15-20 minutes, stirring more carefully because they stick to the bottom. Amaretto: three tablespoons per kilo at the end of cooking with one minute of boiling, four with sour cherries. Vanilla: half a split bean from the start, which softens the acidic edges of sour cherries and gives depth to sweet ones; extract is fine, but off the heat, one teaspoon.
A Minnelea recipe built around Extra Black Blueberry Jam: we do not make cherry jam, because in Cilento cherry is not a serious crop and we work only the fruit from the hills around us. Black blueberry is the closest jar in character - dark, with the same balance between sweet and acid, no added pectin and a short ingredient list - and we cook it under vacuum at low temperature precisely to work around the color problem described above, something that cannot be replicated on a home stove.