Local, so true re safety vs longevity and you are absolutely right. I sometimes bumble words . When I started preserving, like many, I feared killing people with botulism. Now, using cleanliness and knowing what I`m doing, I have few worries on true `safety.` When I think of safety now it`s not in context of physical but rather than `safer than sorry` in trying not to lose a batch.

I suspect the saftey guidelines we are all given are overly cautious; your evidence of sugar reduction further supports that as does our experimentation with different things here. As mentioned earlier, I know a Woman in Italy who uses methods considered unsafe in North America – i.e. she does tomato sauce in any bottle she can find (including old beer and pop bottles) and seals them with wax. She has done it this way for her entire life and laughs that one would do it any other way.

According to Joy of Cooking (not exactly the bible on preserving but had a good section in the revised edition), sugar reacts with pectin to create the set. I think I`ll do (and share) some experiements in coming weeks – I`ll cook some pectin with nothing added and cook another batch with sugar and see what happes `tween the two. If you`ve ever eaten pectin as-is (I taste everything that goes into a jar), it becomes obvious that most are jarringly bitter and need more sugar as well.

Good discussion guys, really excited to learn more about pectin now – even though it`s something i rarely add to a batch.

I know that honey has a pH of about 3.2 – 4.5 (so safely under the magic 4.6 pH for safe canning) so when used in conjunction with acidic fruits it should be perfectly safe for canning.

FWIW in nearly every preserve in which I use sugar, I cut the amount way, WAY down from published recipes. The affects on yield and texture can be dramatic, but I’ve not had an issue with spoilage at all; some of my jams are going strong after 2 years. I believe that the sugar is more important as a preservative if you do NOT water-bath process your jams, because sugar inhibits the growth of microorganisms that would be killed in a boiling water-bath.

Gloria – I agree, the more pectin needs more sugar relationship is baffling to me; I would expect the opposite. But I always think of apples; without sugar, it is impossible to make an apple jam – you just make applesauce, followed by apple butter. You need the sugar to make it jammy. However, cook down strawberries for long enough and you have jam – even if you don’t add any other ingredient. Weird, but there it is.