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Peach Jam with Pineapple
Allow three fourths a pound of sugar to each pound of fruit. Peel the peaches and cut the pulp in small pieces; remove peel and "eyes" from the pineapples, then pick in fine pieces or grate coarse. The proportions of fruit are largely a matter of taste, but there should be at least as much peach as pineapple. The lemon is used to accentuate the flavor of the other fruits; thus the juice of a lemon to each pound of fruit would be sufficient. If the additional flavor of lemon be desired, add the grated yellow rind of the lemons - none of the white portion. Put the fruit and sugar into the saucepan in alternate layers. Heat gradually to the boiling point, then let simmer four or five hours, or until smooth and thick. Do not cook too long, as the juice will thicken more on cooling.
A proportional recipe rather than a fixed one: it gives ratios and leaves the quantities to whatever fruit is on hand. Two things need translating for a modern cook — the sugar weight and the cooking time.
- The sugar ratioThree quarters of a pound of sugar per pound of fruit works out to roughly 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar per pound. The recipe does not say whether the fruit is to be weighed before or after peeling and pitting.
- Four or five hours is a long-boil methodFour or five hours is a long, slow reduction -- In a wide pan on a modern burner the same jam is likely to reach setting point a great deal sooner, quite possibly within the hour. Judge by consistency, not the clock — the instruction to stop short because "the juice will thicken more on cooling" is the real guide.
- Testing the setNo pectin is added and peaches are low in it, so the set will be soft. Chill a saucer in the freezer, drop a spoonful on it, and push with a finger after a minute; a wrinkled surface means it is done. Roughly 220F at sea level on a candy thermometer.
- Peeling peachesScore an X in the base, drop into boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds, then into ice water. The skins slip off. Freestone varieties are far easier to cut into small pieces than clingstones.
- Pineapple "eyes"The small brown dots left after the rind is cut away. Remove them with the tip of a knife in diagonal channels, or peel deeply enough to take them with the skin. The recipe offers picking into fine pieces and coarse grating as equal alternatives.
- The lemon is not optionalThe lemon -- Juice of one lemon per pound of fruit is a lot by modern jam standards. The recipe presents it as a flavour accent, but the acid also helps the sugar set and keeps the finished jam acidic; there is no good reason to cut it back.
- SealingThe recipe stops at the pan and says nothing about jars. Ladle into hot sterilised half-pint jars, leave 1/4 inch headspace, and process in a boiling-water bath following current published times for jam at your altitude.
- YieldOne pound of fruit with its sugar gives roughly one pint of finished jam. Four pounds of mixed peach and pineapple is a sensible batch for a single pan.
Janet McKenzie Hill's Canning, Preserving and Jelly Making appeared in 1914. Commercial plantations and canneries in Hawaii had expanded rapidly in the first decade of the century, though that expansion was overwhelmingly a canning industry, and the fresh fruit that reached New England came chiefly by steamship from the Caribbean and Florida, so a New England cook could reasonably be told to peel one in August alongside her peaches. The pairing makes sense beyond novelty: peaches are low in both acid and pectin and tend to set poorly on their own, while pineapple contributes sharpness and body, and the generous lemon juice covers the rest. The distinction often drawn between jam and preserve is one of form rather than method: jam is a mass, preserves keep the pieces whole in syrup.