Home › The Peach and Apricot › Peach Butter
Peach Butter
Pare, stone and crush very ripe peaches, and simmer in boiled cider which has been reduced to the thickness of molasses. To each gallon of the cider (after boiling) should be added a pound of sugar. To three quarts of the peach pulp allow a pint of the thick cider and sugar. This may be spiced if liked.
A fruit butter of the plainest sort: peach pulp cooked down in boiled cider rather than in its own juice or a heavy syrup. The whole character of it depends on the cider, which the recipe assumes you already have on hand.
- Boiled cider is the hingeSweet (unfermented) cider simmered down until it is as thick as molasses. Commercial boiled cider is typically reduced about seven to one, so a gallon of fresh cider yields well under a quart of syrup, and it is the source of nearly all the tartness and depth here. Bottled boiled cider is sold by New England producers; apple cider concentrate is not the same thing and is usually much sweeter.
- Reading the sugar ratio"To each gallon of the cider (after boiling)" means a pound of sugar per gallon of already-reduced syrup, which is a larger batch than most people want. The same ratio scales down to about 2 ounces of sugar per pint of thick cider, stirred in before it goes with the fruit.
- Proportions in practiceThree quarts of crushed peach pulp to one pint of the sweetened boiled cider. Three quarts of pulp is roughly 5 to 6 lb of peeled, stoned fruit, and the batch cooks down to something like 2 to 3 pints of butter.
- Peeling"Pare" meant a knife, but a 30-second dip in boiling water and a plunge into ice water slips the skins off very ripe freestone peaches with no loss of flesh. Clingstones are more trouble than they are worth for this.
- The cookingLow heat, a wide heavy pan, and frequent stirring with a flat-edged spoon that reaches the corners. Sugar and reduced cider together scorch readily, and a scorched fruit butter cannot be rescued. Expect an hour or more of active simmering; a slow cooker left uncovered on low works if you would rather not stand over it.
- Testing for doneSpoon a little onto a cold plate. When no ring of watery liquid seeps out at the edge and a spoon drawn through the pan leaves a track for a moment, it is finished. A mounded spoonful should hold its shape.
- Spicing"May be spiced if liked" in a book of this period means cinnamon, clove, allspice, mace, or a strip of lemon peel. Add ground spice in the last fifteen minutes so it does not turn dusty and bitter, or hang whole spices in a bag and pull them out.
- StorageThe recipe gives no canning directions, and the sugar level here is far below what preserves fruit on a shelf. Refrigerate it and use within a few weeks, freeze it, or follow a current tested water-bath process for fruit butters if you want shelf-stable jars.
Fruit butters were the thrifty end of the preserving season: fruit too soft or too plentiful to be worth putting up whole, cooked down slowly until it kept for a while on its own concentration. Boiled cider was the standard sweetener of apple country before cheap refined sugar reached every kitchen, and a farm that pressed apples in autumn would keep jugs of the reduced syrup for pies, mincemeat, sweetening, and butters like this one. Using it with peaches rather than apples is the interesting move here, in a season when the cider was on hand and the peach glut arrived a few weeks before the apples did. Cookbooks of this period rarely specify sealing for fruit butters.