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Canned Pie Plant
Cut the pie plant in pieces, two inches long, put over a slow fire with its weight in sugar; when sugar is dissolved let it boil slowly until clear, but do not let it cook long enough to become dark colored. Put up in air-tight cans.
"Pie plant" is rhubarb, and the method here is a straightforward hot preserve — equal weights of fruit and sugar cooked to clarity. The problem is the last sentence, which describes a sealing practice that is no longer accepted.
- Pie plant is rhubarbThe name was common in nineteenth-century American cookbooks, and reflects its familiar use in pies. Only the stalks are eaten.
- The leaves are toxicRhubarb leaf blades carry high levels of oxalic acid and related compounds and have caused poisonings; they are never eaten and should not go into the pot. Trim every trace of leaf from the top of each stalk.
- No processing is given"Put up in air-tight cans" means filling hot jars and sealing them, relying on the heat of the contents alone. That is open-kettle canning, and it is no longer considered safe: it gives no measured time at temperature, no verified seal, and no control over what settles on the jar rim during filling.
- Acidity is not a full defenceRhubarb is genuinely high-acid, around pH 3.1, so Clostridium botulinum is not the main worry here. Mould and yeast spoilage in an unprocessed sealed jar is, and a mould-spoiled jar can raise the pH of its contents over time.
- "Air-tight cans" meant something differentIn this period that covered tin cans sealed with solder as well as glass jars with rubber rings and zinc lids. Neither behaves like a modern two-piece lid, and old sealing methods cannot be assumed to translate.
- If you want canned rhubarbUse a current tested procedure from a reliable canning authority, which will specify jar size, headspace and a timed boiling-water process. Alternatively, cook the fruit as written and keep it refrigerated or frozen as a short-keeping compote rather than a shelf-stable preserve.
Rhubarb was established in American kitchen gardens by the early nineteenth century and spread widely, in part because it was among the first things in the garden fit to eat after winter — a sharp, sour stalk arriving weeks before any berry. Cooks called it pie plant for its most familiar use. The equal weight of sugar in this recipe does double duty: it tames the acid, and the resulting heavy syrup was itself regarded in the period as a preservative. Reliance on sugar and a tight seal was common in nineteenth-century preserving, and it is exactly the assumption modern canning guidance was written to correct.