Fordyce Maxwell: 'The jam was well set, the picky might even say solid, as we cut it out in chunks'

AH, EXPERIENCE. That ability to recognise a mistake when you make it for the second time. Or a third. Ally that to congenital impatience and what do you get? Very variable homemade marmalade, that's what.

It's not for lack of practice or early hints. My mother, and father, used to make a lot of jam and marmalade and occasionally we used to 'help'.

That usually meant eating as many strawberries or raspberries as we could snaffle during preparation – gooseberries and blackcurrants weren't so popular and quite often she ended up with the correct weight of fruit to sugar – then trying to test the jam almost before it reached boiling point.

As every WRI member knows, that involves taking a small amount from the boiling mix with a wooden spoon and putting it on a saucer to see if, and how quickly, it sets.

It's hard to describe what to look for to those who only ever see jam coming out of a jar, knowing nothing of the skill, dedication and hard work that goes into making it – speaking personally of my annual foray into the kitchen – but, essentially, if the small amount on the saucer stays in one place, sits up, even wrinkles a little, then it is time to put it into jars.

If the sample is runny and spreads out it is not ready, no matter how good it tastes and no matter how often poking little fingers are slapped away. The mistake of the impatient is to convince ourselves that the sample is not as runny as it looks.

My mother's jams and marmalades were not invariably runny. Sometimes she became engrossed in a book and the resulting jam was well set, the picky might even say solid, as we cut it out in chunks. But often it was the consistency WRI jam should be, and was always tasty.

I can say our marmalade is tasty and in a triumph of hope over experience I always look forward to making it, even if navel oranges in January don't create the excitement and push and shove queues they used to do before supermarkets took over the world.

So supplies in, a bargain at 50p a pound this year, we moved on to the invariable routine of boiling the whole oranges, allowing them to cool, tearing up and de-pipping then boiling the mix with sugar according to instructions.

The crucial point comes when I convince myself that the marmalade is setting, remove it from the stove, ladle it into the pre-heated jars and allow it to sit for several hours, lifting a jar hopefully at intervals to test fluidity.

Half a dozen times this year I said: "It's set!"; followed, in some disappointment, by: "No, I'm damned if it has." After the sixth time I tipped all the jars back into the jam pan in a fury and boiled the lot again.

The alert will have spotted the slight flaws in this procedure and think that a little more patience, or a straitjacket, would help as every year I convince myself that this time I've judged the setting correctly.

No worries, the master plan now is to make a manufacturing failure a selling point: "Unique twice-boiled marmalade. Take a jar now while stocks last." It's a winner.