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Asparagus (Use only the tender portions)
Use only the tender portions of freshly cut asparagus. Remove the coarse scales at the base of stalk, and wash carefully to remove any sand. Set the stalks, heads up and just below the narrowing of the jar, in the sterilized jars; put lukewarm water in the cooker, cover, and when boiling, adjust the rubbers; fill the jars with salted, boiling water, set the covers in place, and cook about half an hour; then tighten the covers. Or when the asparagus is cooked nearly enough for the table, the rubbers and lids may be adjusted for a final cooking of about ten minutes.
Large Green or Red Peppers Cut around the stem of each pepper and remove the piece and the seeds; wash each pepper carefully and cover with boiling water as many peppers as, when softened somewhat, will fill the jar; cover and let simmer about five minutes; drain, cover with cold water, and drain again; press the peppers, one by one, into a sterilized jar; set the jar on a cloth on the rack in a steam cooker; fill jar and cooker, or other appliance, with lukewarm water; adjust the rubber and cover, but do not tighten the cover; cover the cooker and let the peppers cook about ten minutes after boiling begins in the cooker. When the peppers seem tender, tested with a fork, replace the cover, first adding boiling water, if needed to fill the jar, and let cook about ten minutes; then remove the jar and tighten the cover.
This is a home-canning procedure for two low-acid vegetables, and it is the single clearest example of a method that current food science rejects outright. The points below explain the specific failure rather than offering a revised timetable.
- The core problem: low-acid vegetablesAsparagus and sweet peppers both sit well above pH 4.6. That is the threshold above which Clostridium botulinum spores can germinate and produce toxin in the oxygen-free interior of a sealed jar. Nothing in this recipe lowers the pH.
- Steam cooker is not a pressure cannerThe "steam cooker" and the boiling-water bath described here reach 212F and no higher. Botulinum spores survive that temperature indefinitely; they require roughly 240-250F, which only a pressure canner holds. A thirty-minute or ten-minute boil is irrelevant to spore destruction.
- The times are far too short in any caseThe times reflect cooking, not sterilising -- The half hour given for asparagus happens to be close to a modern pressure-canning time (about 30 minutes at 10 lb for pints), but it is applied at boiling temperature rather than under pressure. The ten minutes allowed for the peppers, and for the alternative asparagus finish, is a cooking time: the aim was to soften the vegetable, not to sterilise the jar.
- Salt does nothing preservative hereThe "salted, boiling water" is seasoning at table strength. It is nowhere near the concentration that would inhibit bacterial growth, and modern canning guides treat salt in vegetables as optional flavouring only.
- Toxin gives no warningBotulinum toxin does not sour, cloud or smell. A jar processed this way can look and smell entirely sound.
- Rubber rings and loose lidsThe technique of adjusting rubbers mid-process and tightening covers afterward belongs to the rubber-ring closures of the period, whether zinc screw caps or glass-lidded jars. Current two-piece lids seal differently and are not interchangeable with these instructions.
- If you want canned asparagus or peppersUse a current tested procedure from a national extension service, in a pressure canner, at the stated pressure for your altitude. Freezing asparagus and roasting-then-freezing peppers are both straightforward and carry none of this risk.
Home canning manuals proliferated in the 1910s and 1920s, driven by wartime food conservation campaigns and by the spread of the domestic steam cooker, a stacked, lidded vessel that promised to put commercial-style preserving within reach of an ordinary kitchen. The confidence of these instructions is genuine: the writers believed that boiling temperatures, applied in stages and repeated over days in some versions of the method, would render any jar safe. What they lacked was a working grasp of heat-resistant spores, which did not reach household guidance until the U.S. Department of Agriculture pressed pressure canners on home cooks in the 1920s and 1930s. Books like this one are a useful record of that gap, and of the moment when preserving vegetables at home was still a matter of judgement, a fork test and a hopeful seal.