I had found a recipe on the internet for Pear Jelly that stated that pectin would not be necessary for this jelly because of the natural pectin in the pear. I had never heard of pears having pectin. I should have listened to myself at this point and did more research. I did not. The original recipe for Pear Jelly was this:

Pear Jelly
4 cups of pear juice
3 cups of sugar
2 Tbsp. lemon juice

This sounds suspiciously like my apple jelly recipe so I should have been more suspicious. I was not. My mistake.

I cooked my pear peelings and cores, minus the stems and blossom ends, in two cups of water to have more than 4 cups of juice.

To the juice I added the sugar and lemon juice. I heated the juice mixture up to boiling and continued cooking.   It appeared to be thickening so I took the pot off of the heat and did the spoon sheeting test. Nothing. Just slid right off the spoon. Hmm…

So I cooked the jelly mixture some more (15 minutes?). I took off the heat. Nothing. Repeated the process. Nothing. I broke out the box of Sure Jell. I read their instructions on gelling jelly and how to fix ungelling jelly.

I did what they said. I tried a trial batch and stuck into the refrigerator. After a day, the jelly appeared to be thickening. So I did the rest according to their instructions. I canned it and processed it.

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