Important: Safety Warning
This page describes home-canning methods from before the causes of botulism were understood. Canning low-acid foods without a pressure canner, as described here, can allow the growth of Clostridium botulinum, whose toxin is among the deadliest known. Follow current USDA home-canning guidelines instead.
(no template; written individually during the edit pass, same tone and closer)
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Preservation of Fruit and Vegetables by Canning, Etc: Canned
CANNED STRAWBERRIES OR RASPBERRIES Hull and weigh the berries. For each pound of choice berries allow ten ounces of sugar and one-fourth a cup of water or an equal quantity of juice pressed from inferior berries. Cook the sugar and liquid to a thick syrup and let cool a little. Put the berries, washed and drained, into fruit jars and pour the syrup over the berries in the jars, filling them to overflow; adjust the rubbers and covers. Surround with water at about the temperature of the jars and let boil ten minutes after boiling begins. Tighten the covers. Store in a dark, dry and cool place.
CANNED PEACHES OR PEARS Cut the fruit in halves (this can be done more easily before the skin is removed) and remove stones, or core and skin. Put into jars. For each quart jar allow two cups of sugar and a cup of water; make a syrup of the sugar and water, skim carefully and use to fill the sterilized jars to overflow. Add half a dozen kernels taken from the peach stones, before adding the syrup. Adjust the rubbers and covers loosely and let cook about ten minutes after boiling begins. Tighten the covers and let cool in the boiler, or remove one at a time to a pan of hot water and fill to overflow with boiling syrup, then adjust the rubbers and the covers.
CANNED PINEAPPLE Remove the outer skin, then cut in slices, pick from the core with a silver fork or grate according to the use to which the canned product is to be put. Grated pineapple, for omelets, sherbets, Bavarian creams, etc., should be canned without sugar; also pineapple, picked from the core to be used in salads or cocktails, is in better condition if canned without sugar. Can slices of pineapple in the same manner as peaches or pears. JELLY MAKING AND JELLIES All varieties of fruit when about ripe contain pectin. If the juice be withdrawn from the fruit, the pectin is withdrawn with it. Boil the juice with the proper proportion of sugar and the pectin will cause the mass to jelly. Pectin is not fully developed until the fruit is nearly ripe; long keeping changes the character of the pectin as does, also, too long cooking of the juice with sugar. Then for success in jelly making let the fruit be not over ripe, and let it be freshly gathered. Also avoid cooking the juice and sugar too much.
Acid fruits make the best jelly. No jelly is better than that made of currants. Large, firm fruit, as apples, crab apples and quinces, must be boiled in water until soft. Avoid stirring the fruit during cooking as it is thought to make the jelly cloudy. The flavoring matter and pectin will become dissolved in the water. No water should be added to juicy fruits, as grapes, currants and berries. The water added to firm fruits must be evaporated by cooking before the addition of sugar. By this cooking the fresh flavor of the fruit is diminished somewhat.
The juice may be extracted from juicy fruits by heating them very slowly, either on the back of the range or in a double boiler. Juice may be extracted from currants without heat, by simply squeezing the fruit in a bag with the hands, then letting drip from the bag.
A flannel bag is thought to give the clearest jelly, but a bag made of new cotton of close texture answers admirably.
The quantity of sugar needed varies somewhat with the season, more being required in a cold wet season than in a season of much sunshine. Usually a cup of sugar to each cup of juice is the right proportion, though many successful jelly makers use but three-fourths a cup of sugar to a cup of juice; the latter proportion is taken especially when the juice of firm fruits is used and the water is evaporated by cooking before the addition of the sugar. For jellies made with firm fruit cook the juice rapidly fifteen or twenty minutes; have the sugar made hot in the oven, add it, and let the mixture boil about two minutes. Try a little on a cold saucer; as soon as it jellies on the saucer it is ready to pour into the glasses. When the juice is put over the fire, set the jelly glasses on a towel in a pan, pour lukewarm water in and around the glasses and let it gradually heat nearly to the boiling point. To make the sugar hot in the oven, spread it on tin or agate plates; do not have the oven too hot and stir the sugar occasionally. Let juice from juicy fruits boil about five minutes before adding the sugar.
COVERING JELLIES Bacteria and yeasts, the micro-organisms with which we have to deal in canning, do not thrive in a heavy sugar syrup, thus jellies and "pound for pound" preserves need not be sealed hermetically, but other organisms, molds, grow freely on moist sugary substances exposed to the air. To protect jelly from molds cover with a towel as soon as cold and as soon as possible cover more securely. The simplest and most satisfactory cover is white paper. Cut out pieces of paper the size of the glass at the top of the jelly and a second set of papers about an inch in diameter larger than the first. Brush over one side of the smaller papers with alcohol or brandy and press upon the jelly. Brush the edge of the second pieces with beaten white of egg or mucilage and press down, over the top of the glass and upon the sides of the glass, to which it will closely adhere. Store in a cool dry place. CURRANT, APPLE AND CRAB APPLE JELLIES Follow the directions given under jelly making and jellies. BLACKBERRY-AND-APPLE JELLY 3 pounds of blackberries 1 cup of water 1 1/2 pounds of apples 2 1/2 pounds of sugar Core the apples, and cut in small pieces, without removing the skins. Mash the berries with a wooden pestle; add the water and apple and let simmer ten minutes, mashing the fruit occasionally. Strain through two folds of fine cheesecloth; let the juice boil, then add the sugar and cook gently half an hour, stirring occasionally. Store in jelly glasses. The apple gives a firmer jelly than the berries alone will give.
APPLE-AND-RASPBERRY JELLY 1/2 peck of apples Sugar as needed or 3/4 cup to 1 pint of raspberry juice or each cup of juice juice of 4 lemons Cut the apples in quarters, removing imperfections; pour on boiling water until it can be seen through the pieces, cover and let cook until soft throughout. Let drain in a bag. When cold enough to handle press out the last of the juice with the hands. Do not add this to the juice secured by draining, but cook by itself. To the drained juice add the raspberry juice (fresh or canned) and let boil fifteen minutes. Have the sugar made hot in the oven; add the sugar and let boil till the mixture jellies slightly on a cold dish. Jelly containing apple grows firm on keeping.
APPLE-AND-MINT JELLY 2 pounds of "Greenings" Green color-paste 2 bunches of garden mint 3/4 cup of sugar to each cup of Juice of 1 lemon juice After the apples are cooked and drained, there should be about a pint of juice by draining and a pint by pressing the bag. Keep these portions separate. Wash, dry and chop fine the mint leaves stripped from the stalks. Add these to the apples when they are partly cooked. Add the lemon juice and color-paste a short time before the jelly is to be poured into the glasses. This gives a very delicate flavor of mint; much of the flavor seems to be dissipated during cooking. Creme de menthe cordial made at home, or purchased, will give a more pronounced flavor to the jelly.
This is a group of canning and jelly-making directions from a period before the microbiology of home preserving was settled, and the book's own editors have already flagged it. The notes below explain what the archaic language means and where the procedures fail, not how to reproduce them.
- The peach kernels are the sharpest problem"Half a dozen kernels taken from the peach stones" in every quart jar is a deliberate flavouring — the kernels carry the same benzaldehyde note as bitter almonds. They also carry amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is crushed or chewed, and sealing them in warm syrup for months is not a process that removes it. Peach and apricot kernels are not a food ingredient; use almond extract in a current recipe if you want that flavour.
- The processing is open-kettle in all but nameThe processing is minimal and unverified -- Jars are filled, surrounded with water "at about the temperature of the jars" and boiled ten minutes, then the covers are tightened. There is no headspace given, no vent time, no cooling-and-seal check, and in the peach method jars are opened again after processing and topped with syrup, which recontaminates them. Ten minutes from the moment of boil is also short for quart jars of dense fruit.
- Paraffin, paper and brandy coversPaper and brandy covers -- Sealing jelly with a disc of paper brushed with alcohol and a second disc glued down with egg white does discourage surface mould, but it is not a seal. Anything stored under it is exposed to air, and mould growing on jelly can drive its filaments well below the visible colony. Modern practice is a properly processed, hermetically sealed jar.
- Rubbers and covers"Adjust the rubbers" refers to the separate rubber gasket ring used with glass-lidded and zinc-capped jars of the period. Those rings perished with age and the closures cannot be tested for seal integrity the way a modern two-piece lid can; the fittings are collector's items, not equipment.
- Archaic quantities, for reading purposesA peck of apples is roughly 10 to 12 lb, so half a peck is about 5 or 6 lb. "Greenings" are Rhode Island Greening apples, a tart green cooking variety still grown in the Northeast. "Green color-paste" is a concentrated food colouring, and the jelly is fine without it.
- The pectin section is still sound as theoryThe observations that pectin peaks just before full ripeness, that overcooked juice loses setting power, that acid fruits jell best, and that firm fruits must have their added water boiled off before sugar goes in are all accurate and predate commercial pectin. The cold-saucer test described here remains a standard doneness check. It is the sealing and storing that has been superseded, not the chemistry.
- If you want to make these fruitsUse a current USDA or National Center for Home Food Preservation recipe for the fruit in question, which will specify headspace, jar size, process time and altitude adjustment. The flavour combinations here — blackberry with apple for body, apple with mint and lemon — transfer to those recipes without difficulty.
Cooking for Two was written by Janet McKenzie Hill, founding editor of the Boston Cooking School Magazine, and this preserving chapter sits at an interesting moment: Hill knows enough microbiology to explain, correctly, that yeasts and bacteria will not grow in heavy sugar syrup while moulds will grow happily on its surface, but she is writing before Clostridium botulinum was understood as a canning hazard and before pressure canners were common domestic equipment. The result is a chapter that is genuinely modern in its chemistry and obsolete in its safety margins. The peach-kernel trick belongs to an older tradition still: cooks had used bitter almonds, peach leaves and cracked stones as a cheap source of almond flavour for centuries, and the practice faded through the twentieth century as bottled extract became cheap. Note too the assumption that every household has jelly glasses, a flannel straining bag and a dark cool storeroom, which tells you what a small-apartment kitchen for two was still expected to contain in 1909.