Important: Safety Warning
This page describes home-canning methods from before the causes of botulism were understood. Canning low-acid foods without a pressure canner, as described here, can allow the growth of Clostridium botulinum, whose toxin is among the deadliest known. Follow current USDA home-canning guidelines instead.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Fruits, and How to Can
Fruits for canning should be of the best quality, and not over ripe. Berries and all that kind of fruits are to be cooked in the syrup and then ladled into cans. The cans should always sit in a hot-water bath whilst being filled. Fit on the cover and pour the wax around the cover of the lid. The wax must cover every crevice. Set the cans carefully away, and in three or four days examine them to see that they are perfectly tight. Those that are not so must be reheated and rewaxed. Examine again in a week or ten days for signs of ferment.
If these directions are carefully observed, tin is as good as glass, provided it is clean and bright, and again thoroughly cleaned and dried the minute the fruit is taken out. Then, if put away in a perfectly dry place, the fruit will remain perfect for years.
III. How to Preserve Fruit.
We give a table of the time different fruits should be boiled, and the amount of sugar per quart, can or jar. Thus any person by observing the foregoing rules may can any of the articles named: