Crab Apple Jelly

There's a lane near here lined with crab apple trees, and in the third week of September the fruit starts to drop. Small, hard, bitter little things, mottled red and yellow, no good for eating. But pick them up off the grass, wash off the dirt, and they'll give you one of the most useful jars in the kitchen.

Crab apples carry their own pectin, which means no sachets, no fuss, no chemistry set. You cook them down with water, strain them overnight, weigh the juice, add sugar, and boil hard until the jelly sets. That's the whole thing. The colour changes as it cooks, from pale pink to amber to a deep rose-gold that catches the autumn light when you hold the jar to the window. I've made this every September I can remember, and it never stops feeling like a small miracle that something so plain becomes something so beautiful.

A jar of crab apple jelly is a different proposition from a sweet jam. It's tart, faintly floral, almost wine-like, and it belongs alongside cold meat and strong cheese as readily as it belongs on toast. A spoonful melted into the pan juices of a roast lamb is a thing worth knowing about. Stirred into gravy. Spread on the cheese board next to a wedge of mature cheddar. I wrote it down in the notebook the first year I made it: pink in the jar, gold in the spoon, a small autumn kept on a shelf.

Go and find a tree. Most people don't know what crab apples are for and the windfalls just sit there going to waste. The market decides, but so does the hedgerow.