What colour is "real" Strawberry Jam?

Mad Mike

By "real" I mean home-made with no additives. I don't make jam myself but I have memories from my childhood of various Aunt's and grannies giving us pots of home-made strawberry jam and it was always brown in colour.

How come every pot of strawberry jam in the shops is a vivid red. I guess the cheap jams are probably loaded with dies and stuff but even the high class jams that claim to have no additives all have a very un-strawberry like red colour.

Case in point - I have a jar of Folain Strawberry jam in my hand. Folain generally make very fine jams with 50% fruit content and the ingredients listed are: "Strawberries, Sugar, Pectin and Citric acid".

Where then does the deep red colour come from???

Gordon

Yeah, dark brown was what my Mum used to make. Maybe the red dye is such a small amount that it isn't listed?

BuffyBot

I don't remember it being brown. Deep, dark red maybe..but never brown :eek:

tSubh Dearg

My granny's homemade strawberry jam was always a browny red colour. But the raspberry was always bright reddy pink. Funny how one would keep it's colour better than the other.