Preserving with Pomona's Pectin, Updated Edition by Allison Carroll Duffy, Pomona's Pectin

Preserving with Pomona's Pectin, Updated Edition

by Allison Carroll Duffy and Pomona's Pectin

Craft intensely flavored jams, jellies, and pie fillings without all the sugar! This updated and expanded edition of the official Pomona’s Pectin cookbook is your guide.

If you’ve ever made jam or jelly at home, you know most recipes require more sugar than fruit—oftentimes 4 to 7 cups!—causing many people to look for other ways to preserve more naturally and with less sugar. Pomona’s Pectin is the answer to this canning conundrum. Unlike other popular pectins, which are activated by sugar, Pomona’s is a sugar- and preservative-free citrus pectin that does not require sugar to jell.

As a result, jams and jellies can be made with less, little, or no sugar at all and also require much less cooking time than traditional recipes, allowing you to create jams that are not only healthier and quicker to make, but filled with more fresh flavor. If you haven’t tried Pomona’s already (prepare to be smitten), you can easily find the pectin at your local natural foods store, hardware store, or online.

In this updated and revised edition of Preserving with Pomona’s Pectin, you’ll continue to learn how to use this revolutionary product and method to create marmalades, preserves, conserves, jams, jellies, as well as new recipes for pie fillings and no-sugar options. The recipes, both sweet and savory, include:
 
  • Classic Strawberry
  • All-Fruit Cherry-Peach Jam
  • Cranberry-Habanero Jelly
  • Vanilla-Plum Preserves
  • Gingered Lemon-Fig Preserves
  • Savory Blueberry-Ginger Conserve
  • Graperfruit-Honey Marmalade
  • Pear Cardamom Pie Filling
  • Alternative Sweetener Grape Jelly
  • And many more

From crowd favorites to intriguing flavor combinations, you’ll find endless ways to delight your family all year round.

Reviewed by annieb123 on

5 of 5 stars

Share
Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Preserving with Pomona's Pectin is a tutorial guide with recipes developed and curated by Allison Carroll Duffy. The first edition was published in 2013. This reformatted second edition (with additional content) is due out 14th Sept 2021 from Quarto on their Fair Winds Press imprint. It's 192 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.

This is an exuberantly colorful guide to canning and preserving with a fresh, slightly retro vibe and lots of updated and tasty flavor combo preserves, jams, conserves, and jellies. These recipes are brand specific for Pomona's Pectin because it uses a different mechanism to gel/firm which doesn't rely on sugar so quite a number of the included recipes are lower sugar and use different sweeteners (honey, maple syrup, etc).

The introduction covers some of the Jam making 101 theory: the differences between jam, jelly, conserve, marmalade and other preserves, what pectin is, how it works, and why Pomona's brand doesn't require extra sugar (low-methoxyl citrus pectin). There's a short bit on safety and a handy checklist of tools and supplies. The primer on general preserve crafting is comprehensive and explains the steps well. The primer contains numerous color illustrations showing each step with the explanations. The recipes are grouped in chapters thematically: jams, jellies, preserves, conserves, marmalades, alternative sweeteners, and pie fillings.

Recipes contain a title, description, yields, ingredients listed in a sidebar bullet list, and step by step directions. Recipe ingredients are given with both American standard and metric measurements (yay!). Special tips and alternatives are listed in highlighted text boxes with each recipe. Ingredients will mostly be easy to find at farmers markets and larger well stocked fruit and vegetable departments in grocery stores. All of these recipes rely on Pomona's Universal Pectin, which is almost exclusively marketed in North America. For readers outside those areas, the pectin can be bought online. Roughly 2/3rds of the recipes include a color photo showing the finished product. The serving suggestions are attractive and appropriate.

Five stars. This would be a good choice for library acquisition, cooks looking for low sugar and alternative sweetener preserves, garden groups, smallholders, gardeners, and foodies.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Last modified on

Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 28 August, 2021: Finished reading
  • 28 August, 2021: Reviewed