Sealed and Forgotten

What got sealed in the jar.

Putting-up knowledge from 1914 — and the stranger corners of a summer spent turning fruit into a winter’s worth of jars. The oddest here, each linking to its page.

1. "Mango" once meant a stuffed pickle, not the fruit. The book's "Pin Money Mangoes" and "Peach Mangoes" aren't tropical fruit at all — in American cookery of the day a *mango* was something hollowed out and stuffed with spiced currants, mustard and celery seed, then pickled in vinegar syrup. — pin-money-mangoes / peach-mangoes — A
2. Bar-le-Duc jam: currants seeded one at a time with embroidery scissors. To make the famous French preserve, you slit each currant or gooseberry *"with tiny embroidery scissors,"* pick out the seeds *"one at a time, to preserve the shape of the fruit"* with a needle, then simmer them in their weight of honey — the painstaking "jeweled jam" of Lorraine.Read it: Tomato Figs
3. Why preserves keep — explained before germ theory was household knowledge. *"Floating everywhere in the air around us are countless microscopic organisms, known as bacteria, yeasts, and molds,"* which feed on food and multiply; to preserve it you must seal them out or destroy them entirely.Read it: Foods Spoil
4. Strawberries preserved by sunshine. "Sunshine Strawberries": cook the berries just twenty minutes, then pour them into glass-covered pans and *"set in the sun"* for two days, stirring — and store *"without reheating."*Read it: Sunshine Strawberries
5. Tomatoes disguised as figs. "Tomato Figs": small yellow pear-tomatoes candied in brown sugar and dried in the sun until *"they have a clear appearance"* — a sweetmeat made to pass for figs.Read it: Tomato Figs
6. Brandied chestnuts and peaches for the winter shelf. The book preserves fruit in spirits — brandied peaches, and even *"French Chestnuts Brandied"* — a reminder that the fruit cellar doubled as a small liquor cabinet. — brandied-peaches / french-chestnuts-brandied — B
7. Nothing wasted — even the rind. "Watermelon Rind Preserves" turns the part everyone throws away into a translucent sweetmeat.Read it: Watermelon Rind Preserves
8. "Butters" that contain no butter. Apple butter, plum butter, tomato butter — thick fruit pastes named for their spreadable, buttery texture, not for any dairy. — apple-butter / tomato- butter — B
9. Conserves from the vegetable patch. Beyond fruit, the book preserves carrots and rhubarb ("pieplant") as sweet conserves — sugaring down what we now think of as savory vegetables. — carrot-conserve / pieplant-conserve — B
10. A full cellar was winter insurance. Hill frames the whole craft of "putting food by" as household security — a stocked preserve shelf was, in 1915, the difference a family banked against the coming winter.Read it: About the Book