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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Time of Boiling Fruit
Cherries, moderately, AMOUNT OF SUGAR TO A QUART CAN OR JAR. 0 • 5 minutes. For Cherries, • • . 6 ounces.
Raspberries, moderately, .
Blackberries, moderately, Plums, moderately,.
Strawberries, moderately, Whortleberries, moderately, Pie plant, sliced, . 6 " 66 Raspberries, 4 66 6 " 66 . 10 66 66 Blackberries, Field blackberries, 6 66 6 6 " 15 " 66 Strawberries, 8 8 " • 5 " 66 Whortleberries, 4 66 • 10 " 66 Quinces, 10 " Small sour pears, whole, 30 “ 66 Small sour pears whole, . 8 8 " • Bartlett pears, in halves, 20 " 66 Wild grapes, 8 8 " Peaches, in halves, • 8 " 66 Peaches, 4 " Peaches, whole, 15 66 66 Bartlett pears, 6 " 4 Pineapples, sliced, 15 " 66 Pineapples, • 6 66 Siberian or crab-apples, whole, 25 " 66 Siberian or crab-apples, 8 " Scur apples, quartered, 10 " 66 Pie plant, • . 10 66 Ripe currants, 6 " 66 Plums, 8 8 " • • .
Wild grapes, • 10 " 66 Sour apples, 6 6 " • .
Tomatoes, e Ripe currants, 8 " All stone fruits should be pitted, and pip fruits-apples, pears, etc., should be peeled and have the core removed. Berries are cooked in their natural state. IV. Canning Whole Fruit-Peaches.
THE directions for canning peaches will serve for all fruits that are to retain their shape. Select fruit of firm and good quality. It is nonsense to suppose that inferior fruit is good enough to can. Pare and place in a steamer over boiling water. Put a dish under the fruit to catch the juice, afterwards to be strained and added to the syrup. Let them steam according directions in the table, or until they may be pierced with a broom straw. Make a syrup of the best sugar, have it boiling hot, dip the fruit into the syrup and put it into the cans or jars. Then pour over the boiling syrup to fill the vessel. Seal immediately over the steam. When Glass is Used. If glass is used the jars should be set in the water bath on straw or folded cloth, and come to a boiling heat gradually, or they will break. Another thing to be remembered, is, that syrup should be well skimmed before being poured over the fruit.
V. Canning Tomatoes.
POUR scalding water over tomatoes that are ripe, but not too ripe. Remove the skins, slice, cook in a porcelain-lined kettle, with a little salt, pour hot into the cans and seal. Those that are to be used during the winter may be put into wide-mouthed jugs of one gallon each, since in cold weather they will keep for some time after being opened.
VI. Canning Vegetables.
THE difficulty in keeping vegetables prevents their being canned in the country. They really should be sealed hermetically in a dense cloud of steam, and when boiling hot. The directions for canning corn will suffice for the kitchen. Cut, or better, pare and scrape the corn from the cob, and when it comes to a boil fill it into tin cans and solder hermetically-air tight. Puncture the top of each can with a small hole for the escape of steam. Set the cans in a vessel of water and boil hard for two hours. Then, while the steam is rising, drop a little solder over the hole. Keep in a cool place.
VII. Preserving in Sugar.
VERY little fruit is so preserved nowadays. This plan is generally used for rinds, Le citron, melon, etc. The directions for watermelon will answer for all: After cutting your rind properly, boil it it clean water, with vine leaves between each layer; a piece of alum, the size of a hickory nut, is sufficient for a kettleful. After boiling it, put it into ice-water to cool; then repeat this a second time, each time putting it te cool; each time boiling one hour. Prepare the syrup with one and one-fourth pounds of sugar to each pound of fruit; green ginger boiled in the water you make your syrup with flavors it, or three lemons to six pounds of fruit. If the syrup thickens too fast, add a little water; the rind should be boiled in the water until clear and green.
VIII. Marmalade.
THIS is a kind of preserves that is much liked. Quince, peach and apple marmalade are the kinds mostly prepared, though any fruits may be used. Marmalade should be put away in jars covered with oiled paper, and made perfectly air-tight.
This is a canning chapter rather than a single dish, and almost none of its methods survive current food-safety practice. What follows explains the vocabulary and then why the procedures fail.
- The table is corruptThe steaming and boiling times have been scrambled in transcription, so fruits and their minutes no longer line up and the sugar column has collapsed into the time column. Nothing in this table can be read as a reliable instruction, even setting the safety questions aside.
- Low-acid vegetables in a water bathThe corn directions call for two hours of hard boiling in water. Water-bath processing cannot exceed 212F, and Clostridium botulinum spores in low-acid foods such as corn survive that temperature indefinitely. Sealed, oxygen-free, low-acid corn held at room temperature is the classic setting for botulinum toxin production.
- Soldered tin cansThe instruction to solder the lid and then drop solder over a steam vent belongs to an era of lead-tin solder. Lead migrates into acidic and salty contents, and the technique also depends on judging a seal by eye. Neither the material nor the method is defensible now.
- Open-kettle tomatoesTomatoes are packed hot and sealed with no processing at all. Tomato pH sits close to the 4.6 dividing line and some fruit, particularly overripe or damaged, can exceed it, which is why current guidance requires added acid and a timed process; without either, the jars are relying on nothing but residual heat. The suggestion of storing them in gallon jugs and opening them for repeated use over the winter compounds the problem.
- Sealing over steam"Seal immediately over the steam" describes a vacuum produced by cooling, not by processing. It will often produce a tight lid on a jar whose contents were never held long enough at temperature to be safe, which is the most dangerous combination available in a kitchen.
- Alum and vine leavesThe watermelon rind method uses alum as a firming agent and grape leaves for their tannin and green colour. Alum in this quantity is a lump the size of a hickory nut per kettle, an unmeasured dose by any standard, and the practice has been abandoned in favour of calcium chloride.
- Ingredient names"Pie plant" is rhubarb; only the stalks are eaten, as the leaves are toxic and should not be cooked. "Whortleberries" are huckleberries or bilberries. "Siberian apples" are crab apples. "Sour apples" are tart cooking apples.
- If you want to canUse a current tested recipe from a food-safety authority, which will specify jar size, headspace, acidification where required, and either a water-bath or pressure-canner process with a stated time. Do not adapt the figures above.
Home canning in the last third of the nineteenth century was a technology in the middle of changing hands. The glass jar with a threaded neck and screw cap, patented by John Landis Mason in 1858, had put preserving within reach of the ordinary household, but the science lagged well behind the hardware: bacteriology was new, spore-forming organisms were barely understood, and the working theory was simply that heat plus an airtight seal equalled safety. Hence the "open-kettle" approach recorded here, in which food is cooked, poured hot into a vessel, and sealed on the assumption that the steam has done the work. Commercial canneries were already soldering tinplate cans and, from the 1870s onward, using pressure retorts that reached well above boiling; the domestic cook had neither, which is why this writer frankly admits that "the difficulty in keeping vegetables prevents their being canned in the country." Pressure canners for home use and published process times followed in the twentieth century, largely through American agricultural extension work, and the methods on this page were retired with good reason.