The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves Book Review by ChristineMM

Title: The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves: 200 Classic and Contemporary Recipes Showcasing the Fabulous Flavors of Fresh Fruits
Author: Linda Ziedrich
Publication: The Harvard Common Press, April 2009

My Rating: 5 stars out of 5 = I Love It

Summary Statement: Explains the Why’s and the How’s Not Just Recipes & Beginner Friendly

This book is helping me teach myself to can and make sweet preserves. I am confident this book contains all I need to know as a beginner to get started yet the book is great for experienced home preservers also.

I have been raised on homemade sweet preserves (and savory preserved foods) and would like to carry on this craft, but my mother and grandmother didn’t teach me how. I have an appreciation for homemade preserves as being higher in quality than some store bought preserves. I am interested in avoiding some ingredients in factory prepared items. Lastly cost is an issue: some wonderful store bought preserves are too costly (one I tried to purchase yesterday was $14 per small jar) and I’d love to be able to use some native wild edible fruits growing on my property. There are about thirty pages of general information in the beginning of the book shares a wealth of knowledge from telling what equipment is needed to troubleshooting common problems and how to correct them or avoid them in the future.

The book contains over 200 recipes ranging from the common jams and jellies I eat on a regular basis to fruits available in the grocery store and some rare fruits. Some recipes use foods easily found for free growing in the wild near my home (which many people let rot on the vine and purchase factory made food instead) that my grandmother ate regularly but are ignored by most people in my generation. The range of recipes is wide and goes far beyond the three recipes that my family uses for 90% of their homemade sweet preserves. I am happy to have access to this wide variety of recipes in one volume even if I wind up using the basic how-to information and start off using just a handful of the recipes at first.

The fruits are arranged alphabetically with specific information about that fruit such as the optimum time to harvest the fruits from the wild. The differences in fruit varieties that one should know about and how those affect the recipe or method of preparation is helpful. The book provides some historical information such as where the recipe originated from and if and how and why the author adapted the original, traditional recipe. Thanks to this method of organizing the data the reader can read about fruits of their interest and ignore others. Readers who enjoy sitting and reading through cookbooks as some read other types of books or magazines (you know who you are) will enjoy reading a lot of this book even if they wind up not making ALL the recipes. The recipes include best uses for each fruit, which may be one or more of these types of foods: jam, jelly, marmalade, conserve, butter, preserves, syrup, paste, and leathers.

Perhaps it is time for frugal people who are not yet home preservers to educate themselves about this craft and start practicing it. Buying fruit in season when it is at its lowest cost and preserving it for consumption throughout the year is one way to save money. Starting to wildcraft edible foods from one’s own yard, nearby woods or abandoned properties is a way to get free access to food. Lastly some recipes use parts of food often discarded. Watermelon can be eaten fresh or preserved, and then the recipe for the white part of the rind used for making into a sweet pickled food. The waste peels and cores of some fruits can be used to make a pectin base for use in other recipes. Green tomatoes that must be harvested on the eve of the first predicted frost can be preserved.

Ziedrich’s passion for the craft of home food preservation is clear when one sees the range and variety of the over 200 recipes provided and when seeing the background information provided for each fruit. I was surprised to see interesting combinations of fruits, such as green tomato and apple, blueberry and orange, and blackberry and quince. The depth of information, the wide variety of fruits used, and the author’s experience still makes this book of interest to experienced home preserver. Here is a short list of samples of fruits included in this book: apple, banana, coconut, flowers, kiwi, peach, pomegranate, pumpkin, rhubarb and zucchini.

After reading about the author online I feel confident that her many years of home canning and food preserving experience provides accurate and helpful information. The troubleshooting section seems especially helpful and explains various issues I’ve seen in my family’s own preserves over the years (some being still edible and some inedible in cases of mold). In speaking with my mother who has over 40 years of canning experience about these trouble areas I’ve read about, I’ve shared information to explain the issues that she didn’t know about!

This book is all text, with its only illustration on the cover, has over 370 pages and more than 200 recipes. Ziedrich writes clearly and doesn’t fill the book with extra information to bog down the book, it’s all useful. The book is a wealth of information at what I consider to be a low price.

As a beginner, I was left with the feeling that “I can do this” even when teaching myself from this book. With this book in hand I don’t feel the need to go hunting for a second cookbook about sweet preserves, although I have a feeling I’ll be purchasing her book on savory preserves soon: THE JOY OF PICKING: 250 FLAVOR-PACKED RECIPES FOR VEGETABLES AND MORE FROM GARDEN OR MARKET.






Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from the Amazon Vine program for the purpose of writing a Vine review for Amazon.com. Full retail value of this book is $17.95 but I have agreed to not resell it, give it away or let anyone else read it per the Vine program's rules.