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 page directs the use of hazardous substances — such as benzine, gasoline, lye, or strong acids — for household tasks. These materials are highly flammable, corrosive, or poisonous, and the practices described have caused fires, burns, and poisonings.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Preserved Figs
Heat figs through thoroughly in a steamer, doubleboiler or slow oven without water, then drop them into a heavy, boiling syrup; remove and let stand in it over night. In the morning bring to a boil, remove; let stand till cold; re-heat; drain; pack figs close together in jars; cook down the syrup and pour over the fruit. Figs may be preserved in lemon syrup, in grape juice, or other tart fruit juices or have added to them lemon peel and juice or lemon and ginger root. See also Preserved Cherries. Dried figs may be steamed and then so preserved or by simpler process. Many people hold that preserved fresh figs must first be dipped in boiling lye, repeating several times, a minute at a time.
This is a genuine preserving method, but it is an open-kettle process for a borderline-acid fruit, and it ends with a suggestion that no modern cook should follow. The notes below explain the vocabulary and the specific failure points rather than offering a revised procedure.
- The lye dipThe closing line — dipping fresh figs in boiling lye, repeated a minute at a time — is the most dangerous instruction on the page. Boiling sodium hydroxide solution splashes, spits, and causes deep chemical burns on contact with skin and eyes, and no strength, temperature, or rinsing regime is specified. Lye peeling survives in commercial food processing only under controlled conditions with measured concentrations and thorough neutralising rinses.
- Figs are not an acid fruitRipe figs typically sit around pH 4.6 to 5.0, right at or above the line that divides safe boiling-water canning from food that requires pressure processing or deliberate acidification. Sugar syrup does not lower pH. This is exactly the food chemistry in which Clostridium botulinum spores can germinate in a sealed, oxygen-free jar.
- No processing step at allThe figs are packed hot and covered with hot syrup, and the jars are then simply left. There is no boiling-water bath, no processing time, and no jar temperature given. Heat that reaches the syrup surface is not the same as heat held throughout a sealed jar for a measured period.
- The lemon and ginger variations do not fix itLemon peel and juice, grape juice, and "other tart fruit juices" are offered here as variations with no stated quantity, so they cannot be relied on to acidify the jar. Safe fig preserving today uses a measured quantity of bottled lemon juice or citric acid per jar, because the acid must be enough to bring the whole contents reliably below pH 4.6 — an amount this recipe never states.
- What the old terms meanA "heavy syrup" in books of this period is commonly around equal parts sugar and water, though definitions vary from book to book; a "slow oven" is the low end of a coal range, and is given here simply as one of three ways (with a steamer or double boiler) to heat the figs through without added water. The repeated soak-boil-cool cycle is a plumping technique meant to draw sugar into the fig gradually so it stays whole rather than collapsing.
- If you want fig preservesUse a current USDA or state extension recipe for fig preserves, which will specify the added acid, headspace, and boiling-water processing time for your jar size and altitude.
Figs were a common dooryard fruit in the American South, and preserving them met a real domestic need: a mature tree ripens far more fruit in a few weeks than a household can eat fresh, and the fruit bruises and ferments within a day or two of picking. That urgency helps explain the labour in this method — the days of soaking, boiling, cooling and reboiling are aimed at getting sugar deep into a whole fig without letting it burst. The lye dip mentioned at the end belongs to the same tradition; a brief alkaline bath softens the tough skin and strips the fine fuzz, and both lye and soda solutions are reported for the purpose. The author reports the practice as what "many people hold" rather than endorsing it. The book belongs to the period before home canning was put on a scientific footing, when spoilage was understood mainly as a matter of sealing air out rather than of acidity and measured heat.