Elderberry and Apple Jam experiment

To-ing and fro-ing The Hut (our office which was a chicken/pig house once upon a time)I pass an elder bush/tree. It is laden with elder berries. Up early one morning, and it was time to be bold and do a bit of wild foody-ing. Being of the thinking that produce bought from a supermarket or a market is viable food, and that if something is grown from a seed packet which looks the same as the photo or drawing on the packet then that is OK to eat as well, I have a natural nervousness about eating food from the wild. Now I know that the elder is not exactly growing wild, but it is still not an organised type of food. Last year I managed to avoid the elder berry project. This year I couldn't. Time to be bold and take one more step with wild foody-ing type self sufficiency.

I cut the umbrells of elderberries off, and weighed them. I didn't want to be greedy and take more than my needs. Wild foody-ing is about being aware that everything else is needing the food as well, like the birds, wasps, ants, etc, so all I was going to take was the quantity that I needed, and nothing more:

I separated the elderberries from the stalks by using a fork thus:

Then put them into a bowl of water. The unripe berries floated to the top:

All prepped. I had already found an easy recipe in Marguerite Patten's Jams, Preserves and Chutneys, (ISBN 1-902304-72-1, and my instinct told me to head for Elderberry and Apple Jam rather than just Elderberry Jam:

1lb (450g) Cooking Apples (weight when peeled and cored)
3 tablespoons of water
1lb (450g) Elderberries
2lb (900g) Sugar (I used preserving sugar)
2 tablespoons Lemon Juice (I put the juice from 1 lemon in)

As you can see, an easy recipe.

1) Cube apples into small pieces, and into pan with the water. Simmer for 10 minutes.
2) Add elderberries, continue cooking until soft. Actually I neglected to read the cooking method, and put the elderberries and apples in all together. It didn't seem to make much difference.
3) Add sugar and lemon juice, stir over low heat until the sugar has dissolved then boil rapidly until setting point is reached.
Well, did just that, and did a setting test within a couple of minutes. Now my method for testing for set is to take the pot of jam off the heat, stir a large long handled spoon round in the jam so that it is well coated, then go outside, wave the spoon about a bit so it cools down rapidly, and if the jam is set it will hang in a nice blob from the spoon.

The jam did that, much to my surprise. Wow, I thought. This is easy. Not like the marrow and ginger jam I made the other day which never did set properly but made a gorgeous syrupy compot that is great for putting over the surface of a cake just out of the oven, so is still usable.

So I decanted the jam from the pot into the warm jars, and sealed them down, with a half a jar left over for testing for taste.

It never set. ***** I thought. Tasted OK though, like the apple and blackberry jam my Mum made when I was young.

Ten days later, and I had a window of opportunity to address the four pots of jam and sort their contents out. Back into the pan the non-set jam went, to be boiled for about 7 - 10 minutes. This time it has set.

Things I have learnt: That testing for set on a backing hot summer day by waving a spoon about is not going to give an accurate result, mainly because the sun will bake the jam onto the spoon before the jam has time to run off.
That jam is easy to make: if it doesn't set and stays runny just pop it back into the pan and give it another boil through. Even if there is a time gap of several days this still seems to work.
That I am pleased that I have taken another step towards wild foody-ing!