Old school jam

The Food Crusader shuns modernity and revives an antique French recipe for strawberry jam. Pectin? What's pectin?

Natural. Organic. Whole. Local. Seasonal. Unfiltered. Raw. These are among the buzzwords that get food connoisseurs excited, because they signal a consciousness behind a food's provenance that resonates with their own. As consumers, we've grown to equate slower processes and more laborious means with superior quality and healthfulness, as pure substitutes for modern methods of cheating with food production.

But each individual's perspective on the food world is informed by a different agenda. We conscientious consumers of food are a fragmented community. We all have our own reasons for seeking out grass-fed beef instead of grain-fed, or raw milk cheese instead of pasteurized, or dry-farmed tomatoes over the Safeway variety. But not all of us are lost in misty-eyed longings for some mythical agrarian past. We just want good food without weird chemical potions mixed into it.

Fortunately, the movement towards improving our food supply has expanded past the point of being a niche for evangelical hippies. Local, organically grown wholesome food has long since become mainstream, and no longer requires buying into a dramatic sandal-wearing lifestyle change. Choices are now abundant, and we're no longer limited to remote ethnic markets or "health food stores" if we're looking for non-iodized sea salt or some decent muesli.

But these efforts are actually regressive. There is a growing understanding that sometime in the early-to-mid-20th century, something went terribly terribly wrong, and now there's an urge to return our food production methods to their original states, before the Industrial Revolution had begun to bang on the pantry door. Regress on!

Jam

Making jam seems like a very natural activity. Berries, sugar, and pectin. It's wholesome, and it's an easy prepared food item to make at home. If you can eat jam, you can make jam. It ain't hard, and like most good food, it's simple.

Let's look at those ingredients. Okay, I trust my little strawberries; they're from the farmers market and I know where they were grown. Check. I mostly trust my sugar, from the bulk bin and from Spreckel's, and I don't have any problems with the ol' refined white. What's next? Pectin. Hmm..Extracted pectin didn't exist until 1825, and didn't really get popular until the 1900s. Originally it was extracted by cooking apple pomace to release the good gelatinous stuff, then used to augment the gelling action for less pectin-rich fruits. This seems fine - it's minimal processing. But my 2007 pectin has some weird unpronouncables on it. Not going in my jam, thankyouverymuch.

My edition of the Larousse Gastronomique is old. It's one of the earlier English translations, and came from a time when high-fructose corn syrup, aka The Devil's Essence, wasn't an evil to be avoided; it hadn't yet been conceived. There isn't a single ingredient in this monster tome that isn't picked from the ground, taken from the water, or slaughtered within miles of the kitchen. This is the real deal: honest-to-goodness bullshit-free culinary wizardry. Every chef was an Alice Waters because there was no other way to be.

Here's what they say about making some jam --

Jams and jellies, Confitures, gelées -- A preparation of fruit for which the legal definition in France is as follows: "Products consituted solely of refined or crystallized sugar and fresh fruits or juice of fresh fruits, or preserved in some way other than by drying' (decree of 25th September, 1925). They must contain a maximum of 40 per cent moisture, and in consequence hold 60 per cent of dry extract, or which 55 per cent must be sugar. (Fruit already contains 5 to 7 per cent dry extract.)

Strawberry jam. Confiture de fraises - 2 pounds (1 kilo) strawberries (net weight); 3 cups (750 grams) sugar, 1/2 cup (1 decilitre) water.
Put the sugar in a pan with the water; let it dissolve and cook to the ball staage (240 F), taking care to skim well.
Put the strawberries, stalks removed, in the sugar. Keep the pan on the side of the fire for a few minutes.
When the juice from the strawberries has thinned the sugar to a syrupy consistency, drain the fruit through a silk strainer.
Cook the syrup again in the pan until it reaches 240F once more.
Put the strawberries back in the pan and cook for 5 or 6 minutes, just to the point at which the jam reaches the jelling stage (220F). Finish in the usual way.

I took the authentic route and followed the recipe to a tee, except for the silk strainer part. And, after 1kg of carefully halved and weighed strawberries joined some carefully measured sugar and water, an old-school strawberry jam emerged, and filled six canning jars with loveliness, now nestled away in the cellar. On thing to note about our antique recipe - without added pectin, it's a tad less gelled than the store-bought factory varieties, or even the otherwise natural ones. It's by no means runny, but we're drawing upon the natural pectin in the strawberries alone, which isn't a lot. Personally, I have no problem with jam that drips a little as it spreads over my morning toast. If I want something stiffer next time, I'll just whip up some apple pomace and make my own pectin to mix in. Stay tuned.