How to make cherry jam

Sweet cherries make poor jam

A sweet cherry is high in sugar and low in acid, and jam-making concentrates the sugar further. The result is cloying, and the delicate flavour of the fresh fruit does not survive the boil.

A sour cherry has the acidity to stand up to sugar and a flavour that intensifies rather than flattens with cooking. This is why Central and Eastern European cherry preserves are so good and why British ones so often are not.

Fresh sour cherries are hard to buy in Britain. Bottled morellos in syrup, frozen sour cherries and tinned amarena are all genuinely good and worth using — drain them and treat the syrup as part of the sugar.

The method

Low pectin means added pectin or a partner fruit. FoodHQ does not publish keeping times, jar-processing schedules or the acidity figures that decide whether a sealed preserve is safe on a shelf. In the UK the Food Standards Agency is the authority — follow its guidance on sterilising, sealing and storing.

1. Stone the cherries. A stoner is worth having; a chopstick pushed through over a bowl, or a bent paperclip, both work.
2. Weigh the stoned fruit. Put it in a pan with the juice of a lemon per kilo and a splash of water.
3. Simmer for ten minutes until the fruit softens and releases its juice.
4. Put two plates in the freezer. Add jam sugar in equal weight — or ordinary sugar with commercial pectin, or a proportion of redcurrant juice.
5. Dissolve over a low heat, then boil hard and test from six minutes.
6. Skim, stand briefly and pot.
7. Tie a few cracked stones in muslin and simmer them with the fruit for a faint almond note if you wish — though cherry kernels, like apricot kernels, are a food-safety matter for the Food Standards Agency.

Variations

• Cherry and almond, a few drops of extract or blanched almonds in the jar. The affinity is real.
• Cherry and kirsch, a splash off the heat.
• Cherry and redcurrant, where the redcurrant supplies the set with no flavour cost.
• Cherry and vanilla, with a split pod.
• Cherry and black pepper, which sounds odd and is excellent.
• Whole-fruit cherry preserve, where the fruit is macerated in sugar overnight and given only a short boil.
• Cherries in syrup or in brandy, which is not a jam at all and is a better use of good fruit.

Notes

Sour cherry varieties

Morello is dark and very sharp; Montmorency is bright red and the American pie cherry; amarena is small and Italian.

Frozen and bottled

Both work well and are far easier to buy than fresh sour cherries in Britain.

Pectin

Cherries are low in it. Jam sugar or added pectin is effectively required.

Stoning

Do it before cooking. Cherry flesh clings and the stones do not float free as plum stones do.

Colour

Sour cherry jam is a deep clear red. Sweet cherry jam is browner and duller.

Common questions