Pineapple is quite sweet but it does have a tendency to break down meats, like what they use in Adolphs meat tenderizer. I would not add water, but instead add some juice instead. With 4 cups of pinapple crushed, that flavor may overpower the strawberry, so you may want to cut it down a bit if you mix the strawbrries into the pineapple. Pineapple is quite low on the natural pectin level and if you attmpted to cook it down to a possible gel, it would be burning and scorching. Tartness has little to do with gelling. A good example is a sweet apple, which has a good amount of natural pectin, while cranberries are very tart and are also high in natural pectin. Marmalade usually has larger pieces of peels as opposed to thin minced bits.

Just finished the "official" strawberry lemon marmalade with pectin. It seems to have worked... the little dish of leftovers set up, so I hope that's a good sign.

Maybe that's why it was called a jam rather than a marmalade? (finely chopped. oh wait. the original recipe called for slices)

Meadowlarkgirl, as Ken stated, tartness doesn't mean the fruit has a lot of pectin.

Jam contains crushed fruit, marmalade has citrus peel and other ingredients if you wish.

If I were going to make the strawberry recipe without pectin, I'd use the measurements as they are. Strawberries can be problematic, in that they don't gel as easily as other fruits with higher pectin contents, but the lemon peel should help a lot with that.

So, everything in the pan except the pectin, bring to a boil and cook and stir untill it reaches jell point, somewhere between 218 and 220 for me. I test by dabbing a little dot of hot jam on a frozen plate and sticking it back in the freezer for a minute. If it "sets up" it's done, jar it up and you're good to go.

some fruits don't gel as well as others, so sometimes in my "no sugar/no commercial pectin" adventures, I've gotten nice jars of fruit butter because instead of jelling the stuff, I just kept cooking until it was thick. Hey, it's still fruit spread!

Annie

OK, then let me be a pain and see if (at first glance) anybody sees anything inherently "deadly" about this one I found:

1 quart strawberries
1 pineapple
1 small orange
4 cups granulated sugar

Wash and hull the strawberries. Cut smaller berries in half, and larger berries into quarters. Remove top and bottom from pineapple; cut into quarters. Pare, core and remove the eyes. Dice fruit to equal 2 cups. Wash orange well and cut in half. Place cut sides down and cut into paper-thin slices, discarding ends. Combine all of the fruit with the sugar in a nonreactive bowl. Cover and let stand overnight, which will plump the fruit. Stir occasionally.

I would prefer to substitute lemon for orange, but other than that?

Sorry but thank you all so much for your help.

Way too variable as to the primary ingreients. Pineapples and strawberries both vary greatly in size. Weight, or liquid measures would be more accurate. Attempting to make a no pectin jam with such a wide amount of each ingredient can offer more problems. Stick with tried and true methods.

Nothing deadly, no. But the issue is is it marmalade and will it set/gel. Likely not, not without some pectin. It isn't going to be a marmalade but you'll get an interesting fruit syrup or cake/ice cream topping though.

Dave

I'd make it, but whether it sets up or not, who knows? I'd guess a soft set as opposed to a firm one.

I'm thinking it's 4 cups of strawberries, so prepared a little less than that, plus 2 cups of pineapple. Say 5 1/2 cups of fruit to 4 cups of sugar and the acid from the orange or lemon you want to substitute.

Pectin is a carbohydrate found in the cell walls of fruit. As the fruit ripens the cell walls collapse (fruit softens) and the pectin levels go down.

Use some underripe strawberries (approximately 25%) because underripe fruit has higher natural levels of pectin and acid and that will assist with setting. For the same reason, avoid pineapple that's dead-ripe.

I once made a pineapple preserve but ended up turning it into a marmalade by making lemon pectin and adding that with lemon peel because I found alone the pineapple was just unbearably sweet. This recipe with the strawberries and citrus sounds like a good balance. I'd probably stick with the orange (and perhaps add a little Grand Marnier for measure) but that's just a personal preference.

If you are concerned about the results, you could easily halve the batch just to see what it does. It would be quite a small amount, but for test purposes could be the best option.

Carol

Well, I ended up using a recipe from Ball Blue Book... all measurements and I agree measurements make much more sense for me.

That said, how many things could go wrong? :)

The pineapple WAS dead ripe!!! I thought that was a good thing! Most of the strawberries were quite ripe. In desperation, I had a handful that weren't so I smashed them and added them about halfway through. This was after I read on a couple of blogs about how green berries have more pectin.

The end result wasn't nearly as "jammy" as the original sunshine jam. I finally got it to 216 degrees (for my altitude) and canned it. How long do I wait to test it to see if it gels? I've read a month, but A MONTH!!!!! YIKES!

Appreciate everyone's input. Thanks.

Actually, it can take up to six weeks before you can be sure if it'll set or not. Hate to tell you that, but this kind of thing is "slow food" for sure.

If you're talking a traditional no-commercial-pectin preserve, you can take the entire batch off the burner once it's hit the gel point, cool and refrigerate (just cover with a cloth to prevent condensation) and see how it looks the next morning. That will give you a pretty good idea of how the preserve is performing.

Then of course re-heat and jar up as usual.

Carol

Most citrus base marmalades can take a couple of months to set up. If using the Pomona (citrus based) pectin, the set would be much faster.