Fine preserving: Jams and Jellies, Pickles and Relishes, Conserves and Chutneys and Brandied Fruits. Elegant and unusual recipes for city and country cooks Review

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(More customer reviews)Catherine Plagemann's wonderful cookbook, FINE PRESERVING, is great fun to preserve one's way through. I discovered this book through a reference to it in THE COOK AND THE GARDENER by Amanda Hesser. In FINE PRESERVING, Mrs. Plagemann's recipes frequently represent a very different point of view than using the expected ingredients and recipes of similar books on preserving food. Besides excellent recipes, the table of contents, recipe list, and index of this book are well done and cross-referenced. The paper used for printing the book has held up in age.
The recipes in FINE PRESERVING can be maddeningly vague. Full boil or simmer? When you leave the marmalade fruit overnight to soak in water, do you cover, refrigerate, cover and refrigerate? [Answer: cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate]. And, it is an older book (1967)and even the annotated version (annotated by M.F.K. Fisher, 1986)does not include modern canning techniques, so it requires using another reference to know how to put up a particular preserve if you are not an experienced canner.

Putting the above minor issues aside, these recipes are fun and very different. Don't miss banana jam (too bad there isn't a different name for this wonderful preserve), pickled grapes (use white wine vinegar, omit the onion), lime marmalade, cucumber ketchup, spiced tomato preserve, pepper chermoula (slice peppers into narrow 1/2 - 1-1/2" strips). Recipe quantities are small but easily doubled or halved. This is a great asset - you can make up some nice jars of jam with a handful of fruit using FINE PRESERVING's recipes. You'll find you get great bragging rights and willing tasters for your enthusiastic preserving using recipes from this book.
I am not an enthusiastic jelly maker but feel that I should comment on the fact that to make most of Mrs. Plagemann's jelly recipes you must rely on pectin.

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