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Preserved Pears
Select small pears and peel, leaving on the stems. To one pound of pears allow a pound of sugar, and to each four pounds of sugar allow one pint of water and one teaspoonful citric acid crystals (dissolved). Melt the sugar and acid over steam; let boil a minute after this, then set back and keep hot till needed. Meantime boil the pears with just enough water to cover. Acidulate the latter well with citric acid. When tender remove and place in the syrup for half an hour; place the fruit in hot jars and seal at once. Keep in a cool, dark, dry place.
The proportions here are sound preserving arithmetic, but the sealing method is the part that has been abandoned. Read the points below before deciding what to do with this page.
- Open-kettle sealing is the failureThe recipe fills hot jars with hot fruit and syrup and seals immediately, with no processing of the filled, closed jars. Nothing sterilises the jar rim, the lid or the headspace air, so mould and yeast survive and the seal itself is unverified. Current practice processes filled jars in a boiling-water bath for a measured time; use a modern tested recipe for that.
- No measured acidityThe citric acid here is given as one teaspoon of crystals per four pounds of sugar, plus an instruction to "acidulate well" the cooking water, neither of which is a measurable target. Pears sit at the higher-pH end of the fruits usually put up, and modern tested recipes specify both quantities and a processing time rather than leaving acid to judgement.
- "Melt over steam" and "keep hot till needed"The syrup is held in an open pan for an indefinite period, and the boiled pears sit in it for half an hour before filling. Neither the holding temperature nor the time is specified, so there is no assurance the fruit and syrup stay hot enough to matter.
- Citric acid crystalsStill sold, usually as "sour salt" or in the canning aisle. It is the same compound the recipe means, but it is not a substitute for a tested acidification step.
- What the recipe does get rightEqual weights of sugar and fruit, a pint of water to four pounds of sugar, and pre-cooking the pears until tender before they meet the syrup all belong to standard preserve technique. The whole peeled pear with the stem left on is a presentation choice, not a safety one.
Whole small pears put down in heavy syrup with their stems attached were a standard late-summer job in American households. The citric acid crystals date this recipe only loosely: purified citric acid could be bought cheaply from a druggist well before the early twentieth century, and it was valued in preserving for consistency and for keeping pale fruit from darkening. Melting the sugar "over steam" suggests a certain confidence in method, though it does not by itself establish a double boiler. What is missing is the processing of the sealed jar, which only became standard household advice after decades of extension-service and public-health campaigning; open-kettle canning was normal when this was written and is not recommended now.