This jam was perfect: sweet and sour. I picked it up at an Iranian supermarket just because I haven’t seen Iranian jams before. North Vancouver, one of the cities near Vancouver, has a sizeable Iranian-Canadian population. As a result there are some supermarkets with cool stuff you can’t find anywhere else.
Overall Rating: 4/5
Texture: syrupy with cherry skins
Colour: magenta
Sweetness: 8/10
Calories: 300.2/100 g
I like it for a $3.69 fruit spread, whatever “fruit spread” means. It is on the sweet side, with not enough other flavour. Luckily I only made a tiny sandwich with it. I guess I over-steeped my tea, so the fruit spread sweetness combats the tea’s bitterness?
Nah, they’re both too much.
My husband says I need to write about what I’m reading during my jam explorations. Ok: today it’s a local newspaper that I got at a car repair shop. I’m reading an article on Tough Mudder.
Overall Rating: 3/5
Texture: jellylike with apricot chunks
Colour: orange gold
Sweetness: 8/10
Calories: 80/25 ml
Le Figaro has a short profile on the Alsatian jam maker. I bought two jars of her stuff when I was in Niedermorschwihr in 2011.
Texture: smooth paste with berry seeds
Colour: purplish red
Taste: berries with a zing of booze
Sweetness: 7/10
Calories: 55 per tablespoon
Made with strawberries, blackcurrants, raspberries and redcurrants, this Scottish seasonal jam is something that I was waiting for as soon as I heard there was such a thing. I splurged and bought two jars; the second jar was even more exclusive than this. Earlier this month, that second jar slipped out of the kitchen cabinet and smashed itself to a red, gooey mess bristling with glass pins. I am adding this digression because I am still sad I lost a fancy jar of jam and because I keep finding glass splinters all over my house almost four weeks later.
Back to Mrs. Bridges Christmas Preserve. Infused with the minutest traces of red wine, I am certain that store clerks in Illinois would still card you if you tried to buy this stuff. It has just enough zing to perk up a mouse on Christmas morning. The adults might want a glass of something stronger. But it is festive. I will buy another jar next November to celebrate.
Texture: almost liquid but cohesive
Colour: chartreuse yellow
Taste: like a slightly sour hard candy
Sweetness: 5/10
Calories: a mystery
The jam and mustard company, Cornish Meadows Preserves, has been around since 1995. Owners Sarah and Tony Marsland operate out of Coverack, on the far east side of the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall. We picked up this jar during our trip to England this September.
Before this trip, I had never heard of the greengage plum. A friend we met in London remarked on the greengage dessert offering. Then I began noticing references to greengages everywhere. Luckily I bought the second jar of greengage jam I saw. Luckily because after that I did not see any more.
I am definitely sold on this jam. Cornish Meadows only mails within the UK so I am savouring every bit of this until I can get back to Cornwall.
Texture: viscous jelly with globules that I initially thought were blackcurrants but instead were coagulated balls of jams
Colour: purple maroon
Taste: liquefied pine trees with a hint of raspberry
Sweetness: 9/10
Calories: 52 calories/tablespoon
Honestly, I would give this a 10/10 for sweetness if I weren’t so convinced that there’s a jam out there that is sweeter. Heck, right now, for the few fractions of a spoonful left in the jar, I have bread on standby to save me from a saccharine coma. That’s how scared I am of the sweetness. The tart of the blackcurrant shines through, though it is as if it is through a sugar-coated fog.
Apparently blackcurrants have a lot of vitamin C, making them a good northern European replacement if oranges aren’t available. At least I am safe from scurvy now.
My partner asked that I make this a literary jam blog. He suggested that I keep track of what I read while eating these jams. This time it’s Tom Robbins’ Skinny Legs and All. I don’t get it. Two friends recommended Robbins so I am trudging through in the hopes that I’ll see what they see in it.
Texture: runny syrup and recognizable cherry chunks
Colour: dark garnet
Taste: sweet cherry punch
Sweetness: 8/10
Calories: 50 calories/tablespoon
Not sour enough for my tastes, though I could be too blame for packing it on my bread (see photo above). I mistook it for one of the sour versions. But I think it would charm the socks off me if, in a future tasting, it came on a scone.
As a side note, Bonne Maman sells different stuff in different countries. The French site will make you jealous: our European cousins get Bonne Maman rice pudding, rhubarb yoghurt and those lemon tartelettes I couldn’t get enough of when I was last in France.
Texture: like a drippier jam, slightly gritty
Colour: dark gravy
Taste: weak umeboshi
Sweetness: 1/10 (or 0/10 – this was not sweet at all)
Calories: not listed on jar or website
Wildly Delicious Fine Foods (name changed from Wildly Delicious Preserve Co. Ltd.) is a Toronto company whose founders, Austin and Michelle Muscat, had their start in November 1994.
Another cheese jam, I found this one palatable and not too overpowering. Especially in this case, as I was eating it with a cambazola. Overall, I am too in love with cheeses as it is to add jam to them. My guests at a party did seem to like this so I am racking this up to it’s just not being for me.
Ingredients: apples, balsamic vinegar (contains sulphites), canola and/or soybean oil, fig paste, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, water, walnuts, modified food starch, sea salt, black pepper, potassium sorbate (preservative).
PS Check out Wildly Delicious’ pretty hot chocolate tins. Those I like.
Texture: jello, crystallized with age
Colour: garnet
Taste: slightly metallic
Sweetness: 2/10
Calories: not on jar
As recommended, I ate this on a rice cracker with some cambazola cheese. It was not really to my taste and I wonder if it’s not to a lot of people’s since it’s now on clearance on the Dave’s Gourmet website. Perhaps I am a supertaster for this particular flavour, or perhaps I let it sit in the fridge too long before I dared open it.
The recommendations on the jar were: triple cream, three-year-old cheddar – raw milk, parigiano-reggiano [sic]. It also recommends use as a glaze for cheesecake and cheese tarts. The ingredients are: apple juice, sugar, oranges, purple basil, vinegar, pectin, cranberries, spices.
If anyone has had better experiences, please let me know. I hate to brush off a jam unfairly.
Texture: runny, with chunks of lemon rind.
Colour: golden
Taste: yuzu aroma perfume, with a not-unpleasant bitter aftertaste
Sweetness: 3/10
Calories: 50 cal/20g
ゆず茶 or 柚子茶 translates as citron tea or yuzu tea.
The yuzu is a citrus fruit grown in Asia and is well-known for its frost-hardiness. In Japan, bathers add the whole fruit to their baths in December. The Japanese use the rinds for flavouring and you can buy salad dressing and other yuzu-flavoured foods in Japan. In North America, it’s become a chef thing and it’s been popping up in fancier salads, desserts and drinks.
Its use as a tea is mostly Korean, where it’s known as yujacha (유자차), which is what I am using here.
However, while the Koreans put about 3-4 teaspoons into hot water to make a common cold-busting beverage, I have been using it for years as a jam. I am sure it’s good as a tea too but it goes really well on a nice bread intermediary. I look at it as a fun way to get vitamin C. This one is the Hanmaru brand, imported in Canada by Coquitlam’s Manna International Trading Ltd.
My photo shows sliced whole wheat bread. I highly recommend a better bread. Sliced bread has turned me off jams during the last few months.
(In case you’re interested, the ingredients are: citron fruit, citron extract, fructose, sugar, honey, vitamin C and citric acid.)
Pulp & Pectin 