Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Pectin along with all the Pectin containing recipes presented on this site, with 16 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Pectin recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Pectin as a major wild food ingredient.

Pectin is a heterosaccharide found in the cell walls of higher terrestrial plants. It is a natural gelling agent that's critical in the formation of jams and jellies. The levels of pectin vary considerably from fruit to fruit with citrus fruit, blackberries, apples and redcurrants have high pectin levels whilst strawberries have low pectin levels (which is why lemon juice is added to strawberry jam to help it set). On shop-bought jams pectin is labelled as E440.

For a jam or a jelly to set you typically need 60% sugar and about 0.2 to 0.5% pectin. And it's the boiling process that concentrates the sugars added to the jam and the natural sugars in the fruit down to this level. Of these components, pectin is probably the most important. Pectin itself is a complex sugar found in plants (technically called a heteropolysaccharide) and is the main gelling agent in jams and jellies. In the plant itself, pectin helps to bind the plant cells together and also regulates the water in the plant.

Many fruit contain natural pectin, with apples, quinces, plums, gooseberries and oranges (or other citrus fruit) containing the most. Apples and apricots typically contain 1% pectin, with crab apples containing up to 3% pectin. Oranges vary between 0.5% and 3.5%, with the zest containing most pectin. Soft fruit like cherries, grapes, strawberries and blackberries contain little pectin and either have to be concentrated down or need to be mixed with apples and other fruit to achieve the setting or gelling point. It should be noted, however that seeds often contain lots of pectin which is why grape jellies are always made with grape seeds and why plum seeds are often added in a muslin bag to plum jams. You can also add citrus peel to other jams to add more pectin to them.

For more information on pectin and its importance in the setting of jams and jellies read this article on: How to make jams and jellies.