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Peaches Preserved Whole
This preserve is best made in the early part of October. Gather the peaches before they are fully ripe, wipe the down from them, put them into a deep pan, pour boiling water over them, cover them over, and let them remain near the fire, though not upon it, for an hour; then take out the peaches, put them in a bowl of cold water, and in a quarter of an hour take off the skins, push out the stones, and weigh the fruit. Take an equal weight of loaf sugar, dip each lump separately into water, put it into a preserving-pan, and then boil the moistened sugar gently until you have a clear syrup. Put the peaches in carefully with the blanched kernels, let them simmer for six minutes, then lift them out with a skimmer, put them into a deep dish, and pour the boiling syrup over them. The next day drain the syrup from them, let it boil for four minutes, and pour it again over the fruit: repeat this process every day for a week. On the eighth day boil up the syrup as usual, and put the peaches into it. Let them boil quickly for eight or ten minutes, but do not allow them to break; lift them out carefully one by one, put them into jars, place an equal portion of the kernels in each jar, and fill it up with the syrup. In two or three hours tie down securely with paper brushed over with the white of an egg, and store in a cool dry place. Probable cost of peaches, 2d. to 6d. each.
The preserving method here is sound Victorian practice, but two elements of it do not survive scrutiny: the kernels packed into every jar, and the seal.
- The kernels are the problemPeach stones enclose a kernel containing amygdalin, the same cyanogenic glycoside found in bitter almonds. Broken down in the body, it can release hydrogen cyanide. The recipe asks for the kernels of every peach to be simmered with the fruit and then divided among the jars, so a single jar carries the kernels of every peach in it; that is reason enough to leave them out.
- Blanching does not remove itBlanching loosens the brown skin; it does not destroy amygdalin, and the brief simmering here would not be expected to. Modern almond-flavoured products generally use benzaldehyde or sweet almond rather than stone-fruit kernels.
- The seal is not a sealPaper brushed with egg white was the standard Victorian cover: it shrinks tight as it dries and keeps dust and insects out. It is not airtight and it is not sterile. Nothing in the process brings the filled jar to a temperature that would deal with mould or yeast in the headspace.
- Loaf sugarSold as a hard cone to be broken into lumps, which is presumably why the recipe has you dip each lump separately rather than measure water. It is refined cane sugar; the dipping wetted it evenly before dissolving.
- The cost lineTwopence to sixpence for a single peach is a high price for fruit. English peaches were commonly wall-trained or grown under glass, which is consistent with the cost.
- If you want preserved peachesUse a current tested recipe with measured processing times and proper two-piece lids, and leave the kernels out entirely.
The repeated cycle here — draw the syrup off, boil it, pour it back, day after day for a week — is the old confectioner's method for whole fruit, and it exists for a structural reason. Plunging peaches straight into a heavy syrup collapses them; raising the sugar concentration a little each day lets the fruit lose water and take up sugar slowly enough to hold its shape, which is how candied and glacé fruits were made in the same kitchens. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled for late-Victorian middle-class households, treats preserving as a serious autumn undertaking. The instruction to save the kernels belongs to a long tradition of using stone-fruit kernels for their almond note — the basis of ratafia and noyau flavourings — a habit that later cookery abandoned in favour of safer substitutes.