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PEACHES PRESERVED IN BRANDY (another way)
Put the peaches into cold water, and simmer them very gently until they begin to soften. Lift them out carefully one by one, drain them, and when they are cold put them into glass jars. Crush a pound and a half of white sugar-candy to powder. Dissolve it in a pint of brandy, and fill up the glasses with the syrup. Cork and seal the jars, and store in a cool dry place. Examine the jars occasionally, and as the fruit absorbs the brandy add a little more. Probable cost of peaches, 2d. to 6d. each.
A brandy preserve rather than a canned one: the alcohol and sugar do the preserving, and the brief simmer only softens the fruit enough to take up the syrup. Keep the spirit strong and the process works; dilute it and it does not.
- Keep the brandy strength upPreservation here depends on the finished liquid staying well above about 20 percent alcohol. Use a full-strength brandy (40 percent ABV), do not top up with water, and do not substitute a low-proof flavoured spirit.
- Sugar-candyWhite sugar-candy was sugar crystallised in large lumps, sold to be broken up. Plain granulated sugar weighed out at 1 lb 8 oz (about 680 g) behaves identically once dissolved.
- The pint is imperialCassell's pint is 20 fl oz, roughly 570 ml, not the American 16 oz. That ratio of sugar to spirit gives a heavy syrup, and it matters for keeping.
- Simmer means barely simmerThe instruction is to bring the fruit up in cold water and hold it at a bare tremble only until it begins to soften; the recipe gives no time or variety. A rolling boil will collapse the fruit.
- SkinsThe recipe is silent on peeling. The simmering loosens the skins, so they can be slipped off while the fruit is still warm if you want a clear syrup; left on, they may tint the syrup.
- Jars, not corksCorked and wax-sealed jars are harder to keep airtight and lose spirit by evaporation; modern preserving jars with proper lids are easier. Fill so the fruit is fully submerged, as any fruit standing above the syrup will discolour.
- Topping upThe peaches do absorb liquid over the first weeks. Add more brandy, never syrup thinned with water, and reseal promptly so you are not repeatedly airing the jar.
- Time and yieldThe recipe gives no weight of fruit, no jar count and no maturing time; a pint of brandy with a pound and a half of sugar will fill only a modest quantity of jars, so scale the syrup to the fruit you have. Store dark and cool.
Fruit put down in spirit and sugar was the standard way of keeping delicate summer produce in a British household before reliable home canning, and it doubled as a dessert and a liqueur. Comparable methods were used in France for peaches, apricots and cherries, and Cassell's gives several versions of it. The costing at the end is the tell: two to sixpence apiece. Preserving them in brandy was a way of stretching a short, expensive season across the winter.