How to make peach jam

What it needs adding

Pectin, acid and a shorter boil. Jam sugar handles the first two at once and is the simplest answer. Failing that, the juice of two lemons per kilo plus a grated cooking apple gives both.

The high water content is the third problem, and it is why a peach jam boiled long enough to set on its own is dark, caramelised and no longer tastes of peach. Adding pectin shortens the boil and keeps the flavour.

Slightly under-ripe fruit carries more pectin and holds its shape better, which makes hard shop peaches genuinely useful here rather than a compromise.

The method

Peeling is optional and worth thinking about. 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. To peel: cut a shallow cross in the base of each peach, drop into boiling water for thirty seconds, then into cold. The skin slips off. This only works on ripe fruit.
2. To leave the skin on: chop the fruit finely so the skin pieces are small. They soften completely and add a faint colour and tannin.
3. Halve, stone and chop the fruit. Weigh it.
4. Put it in a pan with the juice of two lemons per kilo and a splash of water, and simmer for ten minutes until softened.
5. Put two plates in the freezer. Add jam sugar in equal weight, or ordinary sugar plus commercial pectin, and dissolve over a low heat.
6. Boil hard and test from six minutes. With jam sugar it will set fast.
7. Skim, stand briefly and pot.

Variations

• Peach and vanilla, with a split pod, which is the classic.
• Peach and lavender, a small amount tied in muslin. Easy to overdo.
• Peach and ginger, chopped stem ginger stirred in at the end.
• Peach and raspberry, where the raspberry supplies pectin, acid and colour.
• Peach and amaretto, a splash off the heat.
• Nectarine jam, made identically, with no peeling step needed since the skin is thin.
• Peach butter — sieved and cooked long and slow with less sugar to a thick spreadable paste.

Notes

Freestone

Use freestone peaches if you can. Clingstone fruit has to be cut off the stone and it is slow.

Under-ripe fruit

Better for jam. More pectin, better shape, and it is what most shops sell anyway.

White peaches

Lower in acid still. They need more lemon and make a more delicate, less interesting jam.

Skins

Optional. Left on and chopped fine they add colour and a little body.

Browning

Cut peaches oxidise fast. Work quickly, or drop the pieces into acidulated water.

Common questions