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Peach Jam, Uncooked
Pare and slice perfect, freestone peaches. Cover the bottom of a jar with either brown or powdered sugar and on this place a layer of the uncooked peaches. Alternate with the sugar till jar is full, packing down well, and leaving sugar on top. Place a layer of cotton wadding soaked in brandy on top; tie a paper over all securely and keep in a cool dry place.
PEACH MARMALADE No. I Pare and stone peaches, cutting pulp fine. Cook with a few of the cracked kernels over quick fire until soft, add then same weight of sugar, cook fifteen minutes longer, and place in jars.
PEACH MARMALADE No. 2 For each pound of pared, sliced fruit allow three-fourths pound of sugar. Mash well and place in crock in oven, covering and baking like beans for several hours. When cooked sufficiently to be jelly-like, remove and place in jars.
The headline recipe is a raw, unheated fruit preserve held at room temperature under a paper cover, and the two marmaladesGE that follow it are potted with no sealing step. The problems are specific.
- No heat step at any pointThe peaches are never cooked, never scalded, and the jar is never processed. Nothing in the method destroys the yeasts, moulds and bacteria carried on peach skin and on the cut flesh, and packing raw fruit down into layers traps them in the middle of the jar.
- The sugar ratio is unmeasuredSugar preserves by binding water, and it only works above roughly 65 percent of the finished weight. "Cover the bottom of a jar" and "alternate with the sugar" gives no ratio at all, so the syrup that draws out of the peaches may be dilute enough to ferment or mould rather than keep.
- Brandied wadding and a paper tie are not a sealA brandy-soaked pad and a paper cover slow surface mould in a cold cellar and do nothing else. The jar is not airtight, so it will pull in air, and dust, as it cools and warms through the season.
- Cracked kernels in Marmalade No. IPeach and apricot kernels contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is crushed and wetted. Cooking a batch for fifteen minutes cannot be relied on to drive it off, and the number of kernels here is left entirely to the cook. Bitter kernels are largely absent from modern preserving guidance.
- Baking a crock of fruit for hoursMarmalade No. 2 does reach a preserving consistency, but the recipe ends at "place in jars" with no boiling-water process and no headspace or seal. Any of these three would need current tested canning directions for jar preparation, processing time and storage.
- VocabularyA freestone peach is one whose flesh parts from the pit cleanly, as opposed to a clingstone. "Quick fire" in Marmalade No. I means a brisk, high heat, and "baking like beans" means the long, low, covered oven treatment given to a bean pot; the recipe gives no temperature.
- If you want uncooked peach jamUse a current freezer-jam recipe, which achieves the same fresh flavour by keeping the fruit frozen rather than by trusting sugar, brandy fumes and a cool cupboard.
Uncooked fruit preserves were once prized precisely because they kept the raw taste of the fruit that long boiling destroys, and a brandy-soaked cotton or paper laid on top was a common nineteenth-century defence against surface mould on potted preserves. The technique belongs to a period when household preserving relied on a cold, dry cellar and frequent inspection rather than on a tested seal; jars were expected to be opened, skimmed and watched. The cracked kernels in Marmalade No. I point to another old habit, using the bitter almond-flavoured kernel of the stone fruit to reinforce the flavour of its own flesh, a practice later largely displaced by almond extract.