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.
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: Take
BAR-LE-DUC CURRANTS AND GOOSEBERRIES Take selected gooseberries or currants of large size, one by one, and with tiny embroidery scissors carefully cut the skin on one side, making a slit of perhaps one-fourth an inch. Through this, with a sharp needle, remove the seeds, one at a time, to preserve the shape of the fruit. Take the weight of the fruit in strained honey, and when hot, add the prepared fruit. Let simmer three or four minutes. Carefully skim out the fruit. Reduce the syrup, at a gentle simmer, to the desired consistency. Pour over the fruit. Then store as jelly.
CANNING VEGETABLES To can vegetables successfully, one needs have access to a garden, and take the vegetables before the sugar in composition has changed to starch. Only tiny peas, lima beans, string beans, and corn "in the milk" can be put up without fear of failure. The time of cooking will vary a little from year to year, according to the season and condition of the ground; but these things modify the time of cooking less than does the manner in which the canning is done. In certain canners the cooking is done under a heavy pressure of steam. In some of the steam cookers, while the steam pressure makes an appreciable difference in the time needed for canning, longer cooking is demanded than in the best canners. In others, the pressure of the steam corresponds to that obtained in an ordinary kettle, closely covered, or in a wash boiler. The time given in the following recipes is for canning when an ordinary kettle or a wash boiler is fitted up for the purpose with a rack, upon which the jars may stand. This rack or trivet is to insure the circulation of water below the jars. A tin sheet filled with holes resting on banking-powder box covers or a rack made by fastening narrow strips of wood upon two lengthwise strips of wood answers all purposes. Of course, the sheet or rack needs be of a size to let down easily into the kettle or boiler.
CANNED CORN Pack the corn (see above), cut from the cobs, into jars, pressing it down tight and filing the jars nearly to the top. Lay a folded cloth on the rack. On this set the jars. Pour into the kettle lukewarm water to one-third the height of the jars. Put on the jar covers. Cover the kettle, and let cook three hours after boiling begins. If the jars are not now full, use one or more jars to fill the others to overflow. Adjust the rubbers and covers, return to the fire, and cook one hour and a half. Then adjust the covers, and let cool in the kettle. If Mason jars be used, tighten the covers again when the jars are cold.
This page runs two very different jobs together: a honey-based fruit preserve, and a method for canning low-acid vegetables in an open kettle. The second is the reason the whole page carries a warning, and the notes below explain what specifically goes wrong.
- Why the corn failsSweet corn is a low-acid food, pH roughly 6.0 to 6.8. Water in an open kettle or wash boiler cannot exceed 212F, and Clostridium botulinum spores can survive prolonged boiling; three hours of boiling kills the vegetative bacteria but not the spores, which are then sealed into an oxygen-free jar where they can germinate and produce toxin. Only the 240-250F reached under 10-15 psi in a pressure canner reliably destroys the spores. The same objection applies to the peas, lima beans and string beans named here.
- The jars are not even fully submergedThe instruction is to pour water to one-third the height of the jars. That is a steam-and-partial-immersion arrangement, cooler and less even than a full boiling-water bath, which itself would still be inadequate for corn.
- Opening and topping up mid-processThe jars are unsealed after three hours, decanted from one into another, then reprocessed. Every one of those operations reintroduces contamination into food that will never again reach a spore-killing temperature.
- No test of the sealThe recipe ends by tightening Mason lids when cold and says nothing about checking the vacuum. Jars of this period, sealed with rubber rings, could fail without any obvious sign. Nothing here tells the cook that a jar has gone wrong, and botulinum toxin does not reliably announce itself by smell, gas or off-appearance.
- "Corn in the milk"This means corn at the stage when a punctured kernel releases a milky liquid rather than clear juice - young, sugary, pre-starchy. The author's insistence on catching vegetables before the sugar turns to starch is sound horticulture and has nothing to do with the safety problem.
- Vessels namedA wash boiler is the large oval copper or tin tub used for laundry on the stovetop, pressed into service here as a giant water bath. The improvised rack of wooden strips or a perforated tin sheet on baking-powder box lids is simply a trivet to keep jars off the direct heat and let water circulate.
- Bar-le-Duc, and why it is a different caseThe currant preparation is a small-batch honey preserve, high in acid, and the direction to store it "as jelly" points to the ordinary period treatment for jellies rather than to processed canning. It is not the source of the hazard on this page. "The weight of the fruit in strained honey" means equal weights of fruit and honey, and the seeding with embroidery scissors and a needle is exactly as tedious as it sounds.
- If you want to can vegetablesUse a current USDA or Extension Service tested procedure with a pressure canner and a verified gauge. Do not adapt the timings on this page.
Bar-le-Duc is a town in the Meuse region of northeastern France, long famous for a luxury preserve of whole white or red currants seeded one berry at a time with a goose quill or fine needle - the place name appeared in English-language cookbooks for such painstakingly seeded currant conserve, and in American books as a mark of refinement, the sort of thing served with cream cheese or game. The canning section belongs to a different world entirely, the era of home preserving before Extension bulletins and the tested pressure canner. Botulism from home-canned vegetables was documented in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s, and the resulting research overturned exactly the open-kettle and wash-boiler methods described here; the USDA began issuing pressure-canning guidance for low-acid foods in the 1920s, which is why a page like this now reads as a historical document rather than a working procedure.