I cannot for the life of me think why Her Majesty's Stationery Office would bother to produce (with the aid of the Women's Institute) a book about jam making. It's one of those quirky little things that makes me glad to be British. But they did - in several editions from the 1930s onwards, and an excellent book it is too.Mine is the 1989 edition which covers jams, jellies, marmalades, fruit cheeses and butters, mincemeat, bottling, canning and pickling amongst other methods of preservation. The many recipes are excellent, but the outstanding thing about this book is the detailed instructions. Everything is explained - the different ways food can spoil and how preservation techniques foil this, which technique works best with different varieties of fruits and vegetables, how to choose the best produce for preserving rather than eating fresh, exact storage conditions, how to present preserves for competitions, and so on.
Don't expect sumptuous photographs a la Nigella or other modern gastro-porn. Home Preservation of Fruit and Vegetables contains only a very few black and white pencil sketches, demonstrating how to use an upturned kitchen stool as an improvised jelly strainer, for example. This is a practical how-to which has already stood the test of time. Although it is now sadly out of print you can often find used copies on eBay or Amazon marketplace, or if you're lucky in charity shops or second-hand bookshops.
I have other books which include instructions and recipes for jam making - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's books, for example or Food From Your Garden - but this is the only book I have specifically about preserving, and it is the only one I need.
6 comments:
Marguerite Patten's book on preserving is pretty good too - lots of short cuts and tips all probably garnered through scrimping and scraping together ingredients during the war.
Back in my grandfather's day, they were encouraged to grow and preserve their own food in order to help the war effort. Such 'victory gardens' became a part of the culture. Even now, there is a television show called Crockett's Victory Garden.
I expect that Her Majesty's book was created for a similar reason -- to allow everyone to make some effort for the good of the country, and to feel good about it.
In this day of off-the-shelf everything, I really enjoy opening a home-canned jar of peaches with honey, or apple/choke cherry jelly. (The jelly is particlarly good on home-made bread.)
I remember the 'sugar-for-jam' scheme, whereby housewives could have an extra ration of sugar to preserve fruit in as jam. Not everyone had the fruit to make the jam, but they enjoyed the sugar!
Certainly if ever anyone had a surplus of anything, it was preserved (or bartered) as everything was so scarce
I have this book also,mine is not as glam as yours, the cover is plain white with black text.. Abe second hand books sell it
http://www.abebooks.co.uk/
Be warned this site is more tempting than amazon!!
I remember my mother filling the kitchen with upside-down stools, as part of some jam-making process. (I think some fabric was attached to the bottom of the legs, so that the juice of the fruit could drain through.)
I have the black-and-white edition as well. It's a great book and very, very useful in being British, when most of other reasonably scientific preserving books tend to be US-centric.
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