The following article appeared in The Sunday Telegraph 22 October 2008:  

More hunter than gatherer, the enticing autumn fruits I usually pillage from the hedgerows are best covered in cream and scoffed in a bowl.  Turning them into jam, jelly or chutney is a ritual that has passed me by and one that has, well, always seemed a bit girly.  Well not any more.  After initial resistance it was only a matter of time before I became… jelly man. Laden with heaped baskets of freshly-picked rowans and crab-apples I am in the kitchen at Rosebud Preserves, in Healey, North Yorkshire, where Elspeth Biltoft, 58, shows me how to store up summer sunshine in jars.  This where she and 12 staff – only two of them men - make 2,000 jars a days across a list of 54 wholesome products ranging from mint jellies to exotic Malay pickles. She is generous with trade secrets.  “Although it isn’t hitting my sales, there’s a return to austerity and more people are collecting food for free.  Making preserves at home feels right… and it ought to appeal to men as well as women,” she says. The first preserve of the year should be marmalade in February, which is made from Seville’s.  Her seasonal gathering then switches to the early summer soft fruits in June - strawberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants and raspberries – and then rowans, blackberries and elderberries in September and then to crab apples in October. She skims everyone from Jamie Oliver to Delia Smith and is always buying books on preserving and adapting what she sees because she cares deeply.   “It’s about trends.  Sweet onion marmalade was a new concept.  Who would have thought… a marmalade made with onions?”  Under her direction I tip a bucket of rowans - still on their stalks - and a pile of chopped Bramley apples with some lemon juice into a hefty 20 pint saucepan of water and turn up the gas.  “Get it up to a rolling boil,” she says, then after five minutes she turns down the flame and allows the bubbling concoction to simmer.  Giving the cooked fruit pulp a few determined prods with a bendy plastic paddle to check that it has softened, we pick up the pan together.  With a heave the stupefying mush is then poured through a 1m square cotton cloth placed in a large colander inside another pan.  It is left to strain and drip through overnight.  “Don’t attempt to squeeze it in any way, or the jelly will be cloudy” warns my tutor.  “And don’t bother with a proper jelly bag - a cheap table cloth is just as effective.” Twenty-four hours later I add golden granulated sugar to the orange-pink syrup, which gives a delicious flavour of molasses.  “I use 12 oz of sugar to every pint of liquid,” she says.  “Your granny may have used 1lb of sugar to 1 lb of fruit but this is unacceptable now.  My customers don't want overly sweet products anymore - they want to be able to taste the fruit.” Turning up the heat I continue to stir the pinkish mixture until the sugar dissolves and then turn the heat up for a really fast rolling boil.  This is when you must concentrate.  “You can cock-it-up here,” she warns.  “If you over-cook jelly you get inverted sugars forming and it can crystallize.” Jelly ‘sets’ in less than 15 minutes.  This is where your mum or the WI would tell you to do a saucer test, which is about running a dribble of the glowing liquid on a saucer at five minute intervals and seeing if it wrinkles when you push a finger through it.  But Biltoft is no Luddite.  She shakes her head and tells me to fork-out £40 on a refractometer.  “Its an optical device that accurately measures the sugar content and takes the guess work away when it comes to setting times – I couldn’t make jelly, jam or chutney without one,” she insists.  “Believe me, just buy one.” I smear the instrument with gloop and squint at the reading.  At the third attempt, it reads 67, so the rich dribble of steaming jelly can be poured with confidence into two waiting jugs.  A row of jam jars, each of them almost too hot to handle, are lifted from an oven placed in a line while they are filled to the brims and sealed with twist-top lids.  With a label stuck on, a sense of well-being and accomplishment sweeps over me.  It doesn’t feel so girly after all and I cannot wait to be sticking on a Where The Fox Hat label in my own kitchen marked ‘Rowan Jelly’ and storing them under a bed or in a dark place. But I need not hide away this red lusciousness for long.  “Although it is about preserving lovely things to enjoy in the winter months, you can eat jelly and jam the next day and chutney in a fortnight,” she says and suggests I make small amounts of different types, not dozens of jars of one.  Jelly making is strangely gripping - with rowans almost past their best I can hardly wait to get picking.  

Recipes from Rosebud Preserves, Rosebud Farm, Healey, Ripon, North Yorkshire, HG4 4LH Tel: 01765 689174 elspeth@rosebud.fsworld.co.uk  

Rowan Jelly (22 jars)  

6 lbs rowans
2 1/4lbs Bramley apples
5 fluid oz fresh lemon juice
6 pints water
golden granulated sugar - 12oz of sugar per pint of strained juice.  

Strain the fruit pulp overnight, retaining the juice.
Measure the juice back into a pan, heat the mixture then add sugar, stirring until it has dissolved
Turn up heat until boiling then after 5 minutes begin testing with the refractometer at 1 minute intervals until it reads 67.
Remove from the heat, pour into jugs and then into very warm jars and seal the lids  

Crab-apple Jelly (21 jars)   

10 lbs crab-apples
8 pints water
golden granulated sugar - 12oz of sugar per pint of strained juice.  

Strain fruit pulp overnight and heat the juice as above, adding the sugar and bring to a fast boil until refractometer reads 62
Remove from heat, pour into jugs then into very warm jars and seal the lids  

Elderberry and crab-apple with blackberry and damsons 24 jars  

4 ½ lbs elderberries
1 ½ lbs Bramleys
1 ½ lbs damsons
1 ½ lbs blackberries
2 tsp whole cloves
2 tsp whole all-spice berries
Small piece of root ginger
½ stick of cinnamon
6 pints water
golden granulated sugar - 12oz of sugar per pint of strained juice.    

Strain fruit pulp overnight and heat mixture as above, adding the sugar and bring to a fast boil until refractometer reads 65.
Remove from heat, pour into jugs, remove the foam from the surface with a slotted spoon, then pour into very warm jars and seal the lids