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Pickled Peaches
For sufficient for a two-gallon jar use twenty-five pounds of peaches and twelve pounds of sugar. (Rub the fuzz from the peaches with crash.) In the preserving kettle place two and one half quarts of vinegar with a handful of stick cinnamon, gradually adding the sugar until all is dissolved and boiling. Place the peaches, a few at a time, in this and when they are done skim them out and place in a stone jar. Boil down the syrup a little longer, then pour over the peaches and place a weight on them. In three days pour off the syrup and boil down till quite thick. The peaches will by this have shrunk so that they will easily go into a two gallon jar. Pour the thick syrup over them; place plate on top and tie down with heavy paper. Cloves may be used instead of cinnamon or a mixture of spices as liked.
A sweet-spiced vinegar pickle scaled for an orchard glut: twenty-five pounds of fruit is roughly two bushel-baskets' worth. Most of the work of adapting it is arithmetic, plus one substitution for the storage method.
- The hinge: don't cook the peaches softThey are poached only until a skewer slides in with slight resistance, then lifted out, and they keep firming and shrinking over the following three days in syrup. Peaches left in the boiling vinegar until fully tender collapse into shreds once the syrup is poured back over them.
- CrashA coarse loose-woven linen towel, used here as an abrasive to scrub off the fuzz. A clean terry or nubbly kitchen towel does the same job; the skins stay on.
- Scale it downDivide by five for a manageable batch: 5 lb peaches, about 2 lb 6 oz sugar (roughly 5 1/2 cups), and 2 cups vinegar with a couple of cinnamon sticks. That fills about a quart and a half once the fruit has shrunk.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar varied considerably before strength was standardised. Use plain cider vinegar at 5 percent acidity, which is what modern pickling recipes assume, and do not dilute it.
- Choose the fruitSmall firm fruit, just short of ripe, holds its shape best; clingstones are the traditional choice and keep their pits in place. Anything soft will break up in the kettle. The peaches go in whole, unpeeled, pits and all.
- The preserving kettleA wide, heavy, non-reactive pan — stainless or enamelled. Vinegar and long boiling will strip bare cast iron or aluminium and taint the syrup with metal.
- The three-day drawThe rest between the first and second boiling is not a shortcut for skipping. Sugar migrates into the fruit and juice out of it, which is why the peaches shrink enough to fit the jar and why the final syrup needs reducing to a heavy, spoon-coating thickness.
- StorageA plate weighted down and a sheet of paper tied over the top is a crock method, not a seal, and it depends on a cool cellar and frequent skimming. Refrigerate the finished pickle instead, or follow a current tested recipe if you want shelf-stable jars.
- Yield and servingThe full quantity fills a two-gallon jar. Serve the peaches, cut from the pit, alongside baked ham, roast pork or cold turkey, with a spoonful of the syrup.
Spiced or pickled peaches belong to the long American tradition of sweet-sour fruit put up as a relish for meat, a habit inherited from English spiced-fruit and mincemeat cookery and kept alive because vinegar and sugar together preserve reliably without the sealed-jar technology that only became dependable in the second half of the nineteenth century. The scale of this recipe tells you the context: twenty-five pounds at a time suggests a household working through a large quantity of fruit at once, when peaches were seasonal, local and briefly almost worthless. The two-gallon stone jar, the weighted plate and the paper cover are the older crock-and-cellar system, which seems to have coexisted for a time with the newer glass jars and rubber rings. Pickled peaches with ham became particularly fixed in Southern holiday cooking, and the pairing is often said to persist.