Cherry Jam

Confiture de cerises (cherry jam) teaches the governing rule of red-fruit preserving: cook fast enough to protect colour and perfume, then stop the instant the set arrives. Red-currant juice supplies the pectin cherries lack, so the fruit needn't stew itself brown before it thickens. The one true thing before you touch the pan is this: speed is useful only when every jar, skimmer, and spoon is ready.

The original formula assumed a broad preserving pan, a fierce range, and one cook free to skim without looking away. Its two-pound charge is already an honest home batch, so the book's ratios stay, while a wide, heavy 6-quart pan replaces the professional preserving pan. Plain granulated sugar replaces loaf sugar because the crystal form changes only the dissolving, not the preserve. The paper-and-glycerine closure from The Cooking, Potting, and Sealing of Jams (No. 2955) is brigade scaffolding that can go; clean fitted lids and refrigeration are the safe home equivalent used here. Fierce cooking and prompt skimming are the dish itself, and they stay.

You are after tender cherries suspended in a clear, garnet-red set, not fruit collapsed into brown paste. Skim the moment the cherries boil. If the froth sets into a skin before you catch it, lift it away in sheets rather than beating it back into the fruit. Ça se rattrape. That first skimming is the step that matters most.