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Cherry and Pineapple Preserve
5 quarts stoned Morello cherries I pineapple, shredded fine, or each 2 cans shredded pineapple 1 pound sugar to each pound of fruit Cook the cherries and pineapple separately till tender, then combine, add the sugar, and cook about twenty minutes.
A straightforward equal-weight preserve, but the original leaves out the two things a modern cook needs: what the fruit weighs and how the jars are to be kept.
- Weigh the fruit, don't guessSugar is called for by weight against the fruit, so weigh the pitted cherries and the drained pineapple before you start. Five quarts of stoned Morellos runs roughly 7 to 8 lb; add the weight of the pineapple and match the combined total with sugar. The batch is large enough that halving it is sensible for a home stove.
- Morello cherriesThese are sour cherries (Montmorency is the common North American equivalent), not sweet Bings. The 1:1 sugar ratio is calibrated to that acidity; with sweet cherries the preserve turns cloying and sets less reliably.
- Shredded pineapple"Shredded" canned pineapple is closest to today's crushed pineapple. Drain it, and use the syrup only if you want a looser preserve. One fresh pineapple, cored and grated on the coarse side of a box grater, substitutes for the two cans.
- Cook separately, and whyPineapple needs far longer to soften than cherries, which collapse in a few minutes. Simmering them apart until each is tender, then combining, is the hinge of the recipe — cook them together and the cherries go to shreds before the pineapple gives up.
- The twenty minutesTwenty minutes at a hard boil is a guide, not a rule. Judge by temperature instead: 220F at sea level, or a spoonful that wrinkles when pushed on a chilled plate. Sour cherries bring good acidity but only moderate pectin; the heavy sugar and the long boil do much of the setting work.
- Sealing and storageThe book assumes you know the sealing routine; it is not on this page. Follow current guidance — hot preserve into hot sterilized jars, headspace, then a boiling-water bath — or skip processing and keep the jars in the refrigerator and use them within a few weeks.
- YieldA full batch as written fills roughly 10 to 12 pints. Scale to the number of jars you actually want to process at once.
This comes from the era when canned pineapple first became an everyday pantry item rather than a luxury: commercial canneries in Hawaii scaled up sharply in the first decade of the twentieth century, and canned fruit began appearing in preserving recipes as an alternative to fresh. The pairing is practical as well as decorative — sour Morello cherries bring the acid and pectin that a preserve needs to thicken, and pineapple, which lacks pectin in useful amounts, brings perfume and body. Equal weights of sugar and fruit was the standard preserving formula of the period, sugar being the preservative rather than merely the sweetener, which is why these recipes taste markedly sweeter than modern jams made with added pectin and less sugar.