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nafex - [NAFEX] Jell Making of Yesteryear

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  • From: "Jim Fruth" <jfruth@uslink.net>
  • To: "NAFEX" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Jell Making of Yesteryear
  • Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2006 09:38:18 -0600

When my mother was a kid (she's 93 in 2006) the grocery stores didn't sell pectin, or if they did, her parents either couldn't afford it or didn't know what it was. Whenever they made jelly from a fruit that was low in pectin, they added apples to supply the needed ingredient. Then when I was a kid growing up in the forties, I remember jams as being nothing more than fruit cooked to the consistency of mush, without regard to pectin content, and jellies of any kind of fruit AND apple. It was 1950-something before Mom ever used store-bought pectin.
Nowadays, we, at Brambleberry Farm, manufacture no-sugar spreads for those who need to restrict their sugar intake. We use xylitol for a sweetener in most recipes because it is a naturally occurring sugar substitute (one method of producing xylitol is to extract it from the inner bark of Birch trees). Since sugar alcohols (sugar substitutes ending in -ol) can produce a laxative effect in some people, we use unsweetened apple juice, not for the pectin it may contain, but to mask the tartness of some fruits. The addition of apple juice allows for a pleasant product with a minimum of xylitol content.

Jim Fruth
Brambleberry Farm
Pequot Lakes, MN 56472
www.bberryfarm.com
(218)568-8483 [Store]
(218)831-7018 [My Cell]



  • [NAFEX] Jell Making of Yesteryear, Jim Fruth, 12/23/2006

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