The gooseberries in the garden came into season a few weeks ago, so in between showers of rain I dashed out and picked the biggest and best for making jam.

The variety we have in the garden develops beautiful red markings as the fruit ripen. The gooseberry is to my mind one of the quintessentially English summer tastes along with rhubarb and elderflower. I've not got a very sweet tooth and prefer the sharpness to something like a strawberry or raspberry.

I dug out a recipe from the classic Mary Berry's complete television cookbook, a well thumbed 26 years old this year. TV cooking was cutting edge in those days, I doubt anyone would have foreseen the range and styles of programs we have now.

  See here for the gooseberry jam recipe.

Recipe Costs

£5.07 1kg gooseberries (equivalent cost, mine was free)
£1.21 1.3kg granulated sugar
£6.28 Total (£1.21 without buying the gooseberries)
£2.73 per kg of jam (£0.52 without buying the rhubarb - 10% of the cost of equivalent at ocado)

This is a wonderfully simple and quick recipe.

Topping and tailing the gooseberries was the most time consuming part, made easier by having a decent sharp knife. Funny things gooseberries, you could get a bit squeamish about cutting into them if you thought too hard about it.

This is a good volume of jam to make, anything more and you're risking it taking for ever to heat up to setting point. It's never a good idea to overfill a preserving pan, better to cook a large volume in two smaller batches.
At the same time as adding the sugar I put in 250ml of elderflower cordial, Mary Berry had suggested adding 12 elderflower heads in muslin, but we're a bit late in the season for that so a good splash of cordial has to suffice.

Still some lumps of fruit left in this picture, along with a lot of seeds. One of the nice things about this jam is how the gooseberry skins disintegrate when cooking, so there is no need to laboriously peel them. The seeds look wonderful in the finished jam.

Setting point was reached and tested for on a cold plate.

Not the best photo, but I think you can see the wrinkling. Amazing how the green gooseberries turn a lovely orange when cooked.

Recipe Timings

0.5hrs Preparation
0.5 hrs simmering
10 mins boiling to setting point
0.5 hr Potting

Taste Test

Excellent, just tangy enough to be a wake up call on breakfast toast, with the elderflower adding a sweet taste.