Garden Crab Apple Jelly

In late summer sunshine, the two old crab apple trees have been laden with ripe, red-yellow fruit. Fruit began to fall this week, helped by a windy night. From my window, I have watched magpies and a pair of crows hopping in the branches, shaking the boughs with their strong beaks and then flying down to take fallen fruit from the grass. Wasps are feeding on the ripe juices of the small bruised apples and there is a scent of early fermentation in the air.

This September, as I am no longer teaching, I am enjoying the luxury of time. Time to gather the small harvest of our garden and to cook and preserve what I can. The old dogs and a gingery cat sunbathed in the grass as I picked ripe crab apples and rescued the best fruit beneath the trees.


Sorting and slicing the fruit took time, but I listened to a radio play as I worked.
As the crab apples came to the boil in a heavy pan, the kitchen filled with their sharp, acidic scent as they softened to a golden pulp.


Time for the crab apple pulp to be caught in a large muslin cloth , which hung over a bowl to gather the reddish-pink juice that poured and then dripped from the fruit.

Some hours later, the clear, drained juice was poured into a pan and sugar was stirred in with a wooden spoon. The clear mixture boiled until the jelly hung in a drop of pale gold from the stirring spoon. At setting point, a teaspoon of the juice formed a crinkled skin on a cold white plate.

Clean , recycled jam jars were scalded and then warmed in a low oven,while their lids were boiled for ten minutes.

Here are some of the finished jars , waiting to be labelled, alongside hedgerow jam and bottled pears from another garden tree.


Below is the simple recipe I used, which came from a basic cookery book given to my mother, by her grandmother, way back in the 1930`s as Mum prepared to leave her village home to train as a nurse.

I remember eating this crab apple jelly as a child, and the enticing scent of the jelly-juice boiling in the pan took me back many years. The picking and preserving of fruit is a timeless task. Something that links us to our great grandmothers and those who went before.

Crab Apple Jelly

Wash and cut the crab apples into halves.
Cover the crabs with water in a heavy pan and boil slowly until soft and broken, then pass through a jelly bag ( muslin).
Allow one pint of juice to one pound of sugar and boil until the jelly will set.

( From Practical Cookery, compiled by Amy Atkinson and Grace Holroyd , price Two Shillings)