John Myers
If your jelly hasn’t set, there are several ways to save it. It may be due to the basic ingredient: If the cooked fruit does not contain enough pectin, you can add citric acid and bring everything to the boil again. In this way, additional water evaporates. However, you should not cook jelly for more than eight minutes. After that, the pectin can no longer make gel connections and the jelly becomes too runny. If in doubt, you can counteract this by adding pectin, for example from the health food store. The reason lemon juice works so well as a supplement is that it’s high in pectin, which helps fruits like strawberries or cherries, which contain a little less of the plant polysaccharide, to gel. For example, if your currant jelly does not set, it may also be because the gelling process is not yet complete. In fact, on rare occasions, jelly takes up to a week to really set. In jars, just let it sit for a few days and check back later. The jelly still doesn’t set in the jar? Then you can boil a small portion for a minute as a test. Add another 40 grams of preserving sugar per liter of liquid. Follow our grape jelly or mulled wine jelly recipes if nothing goes wrong.
Jelly won’t set – cook again?
To be on the safe side, you can always use the gelling test. Simply put a spoonful of the mixture on a plate. Allow to cool briefly there and then tilt the plate. The jelly does not set and runs? Cook it a little more. This can be necessary with water-containing fruits such as strawberries. You can also mix in lemon juice to add additional fruit acid that promotes the gelling process. If the jelly is too runny, add two minutes to the cooking time – but note the maximum cooking time of eight minutes! By the way: According to the EU Jam Regulation, the term “jam” only describes variants made from citrus fruits. All others are summed up in the term “jam”. What both variants have in common is that they consist of whole fruits. On the other hand, you prepare jelly from fruit juice, the fruit content of which must not be less than 35 percent. This also applies to our quince jelly, for which you juice the fruit yourself.
