June Taylor, jam goddess

20Sep08

June Taylor preserves fruit.  She has a space in Berkeley and makes jam* by hand in small batches (in large pots, not on an industrial scale).  She uses local fruit (mostly), often organic, very simple, relatively low in sugar, no pectin.  She also teaches classes on preserving at home, and I’ve been able to attend two, one for summer fruits (plums, peaches, etc.) and one for winter (marmalade!).

I first tried her preserves at the farmers’ market in SF, and was instantly hooked.  It’s a habit that is slightly less expensive than drugs, although not by much sometimes.  What I loved was that I could taste the fruit, rather than sugar.  Plum preserves taste like plums, and marmalade is sweet and sour and aromatic and even just slightly bitter– a well-rounded flavor profile.

I made several batches of marmalade this winter (bergamot, Seville orange, Meyer lemon).  I learned that with the sour citrus, the pectin balance is kind of difficult to achieve, i.e. very solid marmalade.  Even when too firm, though, they still tasted reasonably good.

She does not work with recipes, specifically, relying on formulas based on years of experience and the flavor of the fruit.  So, by weight, one type of fruit may require a 4:1 ratio of fruit to sugar, while others might be 5:1 or 3:1.  She also cooks the fruit for a short period of time, and has a lovely technique for canning that does not involve a damn water bath.

Overall, she is an inspiration to a cook/baker looking for a new way to spend a lot of time in the kitchen making things that other people might like.

*Technically, what she makes is not “jam,” since the sugar content of her fruit preserves is much less than that for jam.  But “jam” is a wonderful word, much nicer than the more accurate but less melodious “fruit preserves.”

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