Preserving with Pomona's Pectin, Updated Edition

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is an interesting book!

We learn about the differences between jam, jelly, and preserves as well as the role of pectin in canning.

This book highlights Pomona's pectin and includes recipes using the pectin. The book is a helpful guide for anyone getting into making jams or jellies! There's helpful information on getting started including the tools and ingredients you need. There are a lot of recipes for jellies, jams, conserves, and even pie fillings.

Overall an interesting find.

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.

I’ve always wanted to try making my own jam at home, but one thing that always scared me off is the horrendous amounts of sugar required by recipes. Fruit is already sweet - why on earth would I want to add 2 pounds of sugar as well? And I can’t use most of the low sugar pectin brands because they all contain dextrose, which is almost always derived from corn (I have an intolerance to corn).

Here’s where Pomona’s Pectin saves the day! It doesn’t use sugar to gel, it uses citrus pectin and calcium. So you can use much much less sugar than recipes commonly call for. There are also multiple recipes in this book that use either fruit juice to sweeten (freshly squeezed or juice concentrate) or they use alternative sweeteners such as maple syrup and monk fruit extract. There are so many yummy sounding recipes in this cookbook that I can’t wait to try, such as orange jam, apple-maple jam, and lemon-pear preserves with cardamom (I mean, seriously, how good does that sound??).

Thank you to NetGalley & Quarto Publishing Group-Fair Winds for this advanced reader copy. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Love, love, love this cookbook on jams and jellies (and oh, so many more yummy spreadables). The author has so many creative and unique different fruits spreads it's amazing. She also shares recipes using alternative sweeteners like monkfruit and stevia, which I absolutely love. I can't wait to try the sunrise marmalade and make some jars for family members.

The folks in my family all make jam. We all make low-sugar jams, so the possibility of using Pomna's is an intriguing one to me. So intriguing I have the earlier edition of this book. For folks with diabetes who love jam, the low- and no-sugar commercial options don't provide the fruit-forward taste of homemade jams.

This cookbook gives a wonderful alternative for anyone to other methods of jam-making.

I was recently diagnosed with diabetes. So I've been looking at ways of reducing my sugar intake. Now, I bought diabetic stuff from the supermarket and no offence they are disgusting. I saw this on Netgalley and thought..... well I guess it was an answer to my prayers.

I used to make a lot of my own jams but the amount of sugar you used is enough to give anyone a hypo attack. This opens another door, an alternative if you like. I've actually tried a couple, hence the lateness of this review. I wanted to know how they tasted. And I admit they taste great. No more need for bags and bags of sugar.

So, if you want an alternative to preserving other than sugar pick this up. It's the answer to my prayers. (figuratively speaking that is)

Enjoy!

Such a neat cookbook! I’ve never made my own jams or jellies. After reading this cookbook I totally feel like I could. There’s so many combos I wouldn’t have thought of. And all the pictures and illustrations are beautiful.

Overall, a great read for beginners and beyond regarding canning and making jams and jellies. For all interested, the steps are clear, precise, well described, and easy to follow. My main criticism is the whole book seems like one enormous advertisement for one form of pectin.