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Today I made a pulp of 2 strawberries, half apple, 4 orange pieces, and 1 teaspoon jaggery.

The pulp was tasting fruity.

To make jam I put the pulp in a frying pan and cooked on low fire for some time till some of the water dried up.

The resultant jam was not thick, it was runny. That is totally fine.

Problem is that the fruity taste was gone. It seemed a bit sour. I am just concerned about the fruity taste.

How can I retain the fruity taste in home made jam?

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  • Just to clarify, you're not asking about preserving the jam for shelf stability, you are asking about making jam that will be refrigerated during its time, right?
    – Jolenealaska
    Mar 5, 2017 at 7:10
  • @Jolenealaska this question is only about taste. Currently I am not thinking about any kind of preservation. Mar 5, 2017 at 7:26
  • When you say "water", how much did you add? Or do you just mean the juice. It sounds like it might have been both overcooked and under-sugared. It would be best to start with a jam recipe and modify it once you've got the hang of it, rather than something than sounds more like a pie filling.
    – Chris H
    Mar 5, 2017 at 9:06
  • I did not add any water. @ChrisH Mar 5, 2017 at 13:26
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    I'm not a jam/jelly maker ... but many recipes call for adding pectin to help it gel. This might reduce the amount that you would need to cook it, so the fruit flavors don't get as dulled from cooking.
    – Joe
    Mar 5, 2017 at 18:03

4 Answers 4

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Most fresh fruits will lose their "sweet fresh flavor" when cooked. (*geeky stuff at end) When making jams, jellies etc., a good amount of sugar is added. This is done for a couple of reasons, the first is to combine with acid and pectin for thickening, the second is for flavor.

When making jam, the proportion of sugar to fruit will be somewhere between 40-100% by weight. (Jaggery is not as sweet as granulated sugar and you would want to add 1/4 to 1/2 more if you were using it in a recipe that called for sugar) Your jam didn't have anywhere near enough sweetener.

What you can do to retain the fruity flavor:

  • For cooked jam, add more sweetener.
  • Make a fresh fruit (raw) jam that isn't cooked, which will not require a lot of added sweetener

Fruit generally contain all 3 sugar types, the majority often being fructose.

From Wikipedia Fructose

The relative sweetness of fructose has been reported in the range of 1.2-1.8 times that of sucrose.[21][22][23][24] However, it is the 6-membered ring form of fructose that is sweeter; the 5-membered ring form tastes about the same as usual table sugar. Warming fructose leads to formation of the 5-membered ring form.[25] Therefore the relative sweetness decreases with increasing temperature.

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    Or cook very briefly, basically just to soften the fruit.
    – Cascabel
    Mar 5, 2017 at 17:42
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    A touch of lemon juice will help many fruits hold some of their fresh flavor through the heating and reduction process as well. Just a small splash, not enough to make them more tart or to taste the lemon unless you also want that. With orange in the mix this may not help though.
    – dlb
    Mar 6, 2017 at 22:48
  • +1 for this answer! I use this product for raw jellies and it works very well!: clubhouse.ca/en-ca/products/specialites/freezer-jam/… Mar 10, 2017 at 16:39
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Use a "low sugar" jelly/jam pectin, which balances the amount of pectin to reflect less added sugar, and then follow the directions for making freezer jam/jelly. Since it's preserved in the freezer, the fruit is added to the sugar/pectin/water after it gets taken off of heat, and is stirred for a minute. This results in minimal cooking of the fruit, and it retains a lot more fresh fruit character.

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Along with balancing the sugar, I suggest a little lemon juice (or Vitamin C) to brighten/sharpen the fruit notes. This especially helps with very/borderline over-ripe fruit.
Good luck and good eating!

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I recall making blackberry jam several years ago from berries that were quite smaller than usual, due to a unusual dry spell that year. The end result that the jam was noticeably stronger in taste and tasted far superior than I have ever had since. This might have been due the lower amount of fluid in the berries.

I generally pick my own berries, regardless of what species they are.

This jam lasted well over a year in good condition and never lost its' taste.

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  • So you made essentially late-harvest jam?
    – Catalyst
    Mar 6, 2017 at 13:09
  • @Catalyst Now that you mention it, yes.
    – Ken Graham
    Mar 6, 2017 at 13:11

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