ana Looks like it’s time to stock up for the winter, so it’s jam time. Strawberries have already appeared, and soon there will also be other fruits, such as cherries, cherries, blueberries.
It is early June and spring meets summer. Sometimes it is warm and sunny, other times it is rainy and gloomy, but one thing does not change. More and more seasonal fruits are around us.
I thought it would be nice to have a table to compare the sugar, acid, and pectin content of some fruits. This can help us adapt the jam recipe to different fruits. Of course, these three factors will change depending on the degree of ripeness of the fruit or variety, but that is a starting point.
Should more sugar be added? Less pectin? More acid? These questions should be answered.
How to use the table?
Take a melon, for example.
Currently, I do not have a recipe for melon jam. However, I have strawberry jam.
According to the table, I could make melon jam according to a strawberry jam recipe, only I would have to add more citric acid (lemon juice) at the end of the cooking process as the melon has an average pH of around 6, while the pH of strawberries is closer to 3.4.
Fruits with a high level of pectin and a low pH.
For fruits with high pectin levels and a low pH – such as lemon, lime, cranberry, blackcurrant, oranges, gooseberries, grapefruit, mandarins, and redcurrants – you probably don’t need to add a lot of acid at all, and you certainly don’t need to add extra pectins. The fruits themselves provide ideal conditions for the formation of a gel (for pectins: sugar, acid, heat).
A quick note on citrus.
The flesh of citrus fruits is not rich in pectin, while the peel and seeds are already there.
What exactly is pH?
pH is the unit for acidity / alkalinity. pH 7 is considered neutral; above is basic and below is acidic.
It’s a bit of a shortcut, but what we basically care about is that the lower the pH, the more acidic the fruit is. As you’ll see in the table, most fruits have an acidic pH.
Sugar, acid and pectin content in selected fruits
| %sugar | medium pH | pectin level | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | 13 | 3.5 | medium |
| Apricot | 9 | 4 | low |
| Blackberry | 8 | 4.2 | medium |
| Black currant | 10 | 2.8 | high |
| blueberry | 11 | 3.2 | low |
| Cherry | 14 | 4 | low |
| Cranberries | 4 | 2.5 | high |
| Fig | 15 | 4.8 | low |
| Gooseberry | 11 | 2.9 | high |
| Grape | 16 | 4 | medium |
| Grapefruit | 6 | 3 | high |
| Kiwi | 14 | 3.5 | very low |
| Lemon | 2 | 2 | high |
| Lime | 1 | 2 | high |
| Lychee | 17 | 4.8 | very low |
| Tangerine | 13 | 3 | high |
| Mango | 11 | 4 | very low |
| Melon | 7 | 6 | low |
| Orange | 11 | 2.8 | high |
| Passion fruit | 11 | 3 | low |
| Peach | 9 | 3.8 | very low |
| Pear | 10 | 3.8 | low |
| Persimmon | 14 | 5.4 | high |
| Pineapple | 13 | 3.5 | low |
| Plum | 11 | 3.4 | low |
| Raspberry | 7 | 3.4 | low |
| Currant | 6 | 3.2 | high |
| Rhubarb | 1 | 3.1 | low |
| Strawberry | 7 | 3.4 | low |
