The smell of homemade jam takes Beate Schulte-Brader back to her childhood. It reminds her of her mother, her grandmother’s garden, and the simple moments that stayed with her long after the last jar had been put away.

Today, Schulte-Brader makes her own jams at home, carefully lining up the jars once they are ready. When the Fourways Review visited her, she shared some of her homemade creations and showed where she keeps them.

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But her jam-making did not start as a business. It started with a memory.

“I come from quite a poor background and we couldn’t afford to buy jams.”

Her grandmother had a garden, and when fruit was in season, she would share what she had with Schulte-Brader’s mother. She remembers the whole process of watching her mother turn that fruit into jam.

“The smell of that boiling jam and the sound of her pouring that hot jam into the jars… it brought such peace over me.”

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Years later, while living in Poland, Schulte-Brader found herself missing that homemade taste. Although her family could afford to buy jam, she said the options available at the time were not what she wanted.

“The jams you could buy there, it was just pure sugar water.”

So she went back to what she knew and began making jam for her children and family.

Elderberry jam becomes first batch

Her first batch was made while she was still a student completing her master’s degree. At the time, she was also the head of Europe’s first essential oil garden, where she noticed the elderberries growing on trees.

“I didn’t want them to go to waste.”

That became her first-ever jam: elderberry, with what she describes as ‘a good pluck of schnapps’.

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As a student who needed money, she and others sold the jam at the garden. Her recipe has changed little in its basic philosophy: more fruit, less sugar.

“Normally you use a kilo of sugar and a kilo of fruit. My jams are half a kilo of sugar and a kilo of fruit.”

Instead of depending on sugar to make the jam set, Schulte-Brader uses pectin, a natural gelling substance from apples, along with plenty of lemon juice.

For her, making jam is something she fits into her life when she can, whether that is at night or over a weekend. There is something about the process that keeps drawing her back.

She cleans and chops the fruit, adds the sugar and lemon juice, and lets it stand overnight. The following evening, she cooks it.

Then comes the part she loves most. “The whole house smells of raspberries or apples or whatever jam I’m making.”

That smell brings back her mother, who has since passed away, making the process feel like a small connection to her childhood.

And once the jars are filled and lined up, Schulte-Brader gets another kind of satisfaction from seeing the finished product.

But ultimately, she wants the person opening one of her jars to taste the same thing she has always wanted from jam. “What I want them to taste is fruit, not sugar. I do it with love. I put all my love into my jams.”

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