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Brandied Peaches
Select choice peaches and leave them whole.
Brush the skins carefully to remove the down, or dip first in boiling water and then in cold, and slip off the skins. Full directions are given under preparation of fruit for preserves, etc.
Make a syrup by boiling three fourths a pound of sugar for each pound of fruit, with a cup of water to each pound of sugar. Skim the syrup, then in it cook the peaches, a few at a time, until tender. When cold, put the peaches into jars, mix a cup of brandy with each cup of cold syrup, and use at once to fill the jars.
Close the jars as in canning fruit. California brandy is often used for brandied peaches. If the syrup be thin, drain from the fruit and reduce by boiling, then chill and add the brandy.
A cold-pack brandied fruit: the peaches are cooked in syrup, cooled, then jarred with an equal-parts mixture of syrup and brandy. The proportions are given per pound of fruit, so the recipe scales to whatever you have.
- Do the math firstThree-quarters pound of sugar per pound of fruit is roughly 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar; a cup of water per pound of sugar means about 3/4 cup water for that amount. Four pounds of peaches therefore takes something like 6 3/4 cups sugar and 3 cups water; the yield in jars depends on how loosely the whole fruit packs.
- Add the brandy coldThis is the hinge. The syrup must be fully cold before the brandy goes in, and the mixture is never reheated. Warm syrup drives off alcohol, and the alcohol is doing most of the preserving work here.
- Equal parts is not optionalA cup of brandy to a cup of syrup puts the finished liquid near 20 percent alcohol, which with the sugar and the natural acidity of peaches is what keeps the jars. Cutting the brandy to save money leaves you with sweetened fruit in a jar with no barrier to spoilage.
- PeelingIgnore the brushing option; it leaves fuzz. Score an X in the blossom end, drop the peaches in boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds, then into ice water, and the skins slip off. Firm-ripe freestones peel and cook best.
- Cook in small batchesA few at a time means the syrup stays at temperature and the fruit stays whole. Crowding the pan drops the heat and the peaches slump. Tender here means a skewer enters with slight resistance, not collapse — they soften further in the jar.
- Whole means with the stonePeaches left whole keep their shape but take longer to cook through and give a faint almond note from the kernel. Halving and pitting is a reasonable modern substitution and shortens the poaching considerably.
- Thin syrupThe closing instruction matters more than it looks: if the syrup is thin, drain it from the fruit, boil it down, then chill it before adding the brandy, which will thin it again. Keep the fruit under the liquid, as any peaches standing above it will discolour.
- Sealing and storage"Close the jars as in canning fruit" points the reader back to the book's own canning directions; no further processing is called for here. Safest treated as a refrigerator preserve: seal, keep cold, give them a month to mellow, and use within a few months. Discard any jar that fizzes, smells yeasty, or shows surface mould.
- California brandyAny unaged or lightly aged grape brandy at 80 proof works. Avoid flavoured or sweetened brandies, which throw the sugar balance off.
Brandied fruit belongs to the oldest branch of preserving, where sugar and spirit rather than heat and a vacuum seal did the keeping — the technique long predates the glass canning jar and survives in the German Rumtopf and the French fruits à l'eau-de-vie. The note that "California brandy is often used" arguably helps date the page: American brandy production, centred in the San Joaquin Valley, had grown into a serious domestic industry by the early twentieth century and was markedly cheaper than imported Cognac, around the time household manuals of the period began recommending it by name. Recipes like this one sat awkwardly in a book otherwise devoted to sterilised jars and processing times, and Prohibition would shortly push them to the margins of American cookbooks; they returned after repeal, sometimes as a holiday preserve served with ham, roast pork or ice cream.