The late Stella Stock was a great cook and her passion for cooking long after she went to a nursing home. 

It did not take a lot to take Stella’s original apricot jam recipe and apply it to other fruits adjusting the citric acid to set it. The beauty of her recipe is that any fruit can be used ripe (generally a no no with jam making) and although there is a lot of sugar the citric acid maintains the fruit flavour profile and the jam is not sickly sweet.

However, unless you have an apricot tree we only make apricot jam with quality dried Australian apricots.

FOOD EDITOR AND PUBLISHER ANN OLIVER 

1kg very ripe fruit – pitted/prepared weight
1kg caster sugar
citric acid – see below

Select a heavy based enamel or stainless steel saucepan that is at least two and a half times larger than the combined volume of the fruit and sugar. Put the fruit and sugar into the saucepan, stir it over macerating it slightly and allow it to rest for one to two hours.

Place the saucepan on very high heat, stirring constantly with a long handled wooden spoon (that has only ever been used for sweet cookery) until it boils. Still stirring, cook it rapidly for five minutes, add the citric acid, stir through and cook stirring for another five minutes. Remove from the heat and bottle in hot sterilised jars.

For dried apricot jam…just barely cover the apricots with cold water and leave the over night. Weigh the mass in the morning then you will need the same weight of caster sugar and work out how much citric acid is required.

CITRIC ACID
10g per kilo fruit – apricots, all types of plums, apples, blueberries (meaning any fruit high in pectin)

50g per kilo fruit – strawberries, cherries, mulberries, blackberries, raspberries, figs, peaches, pears, pineapples, passionfruit, combinations of this bracket of fruits.

Strawberry jam
500g ripe strawberries
500g caster sugar
25g citric acid

Method as above

Copyright © text and recipe Stella Stock and Ann Oliver 2019 – updated 16 May, 2024