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To Cure or Dry Persimmons

One of the U. S. Government Reports (Fla. Bul. No. 71) gives the following quotation from Professor Kizo Tamari (of the Agricultural College, Imperial University, Tokio) as to the Japanese methods of curing the persimmon: “I will tell you how to cure the austere varieties so as to make them edible or change them into sweet ones in the following ways: "First Method-When fairly ripened pick the fruit from the trees, peel off the skin and hang them by threads attached to the stems in a room for two or three weeks. They will then turn brown or black and become soft. You will say that they are the most delicious fruits in the world and dried still further, they will become just like dried figs, or better than figs. Further, pack them in a box in alternate layers with cut rice straw and keep them for a month. Black ones then become covered with a white powder (not mouldy). They then become very sweet, though the sweetness may not be retained through the next summer. "Second Method-Harvesting time being the same as above, the fruits are packed into an empty wine cask (in Japan Sake casks, Japanese rice-wine). This should still be full of alcoholic flavour, or if the flavour be weak, the cask should be sprinkled with wine or brandy or any other spirit. Sherry wine somewhat resembles our Sake.

Sprinkle the fruits very lightly with wine and keep covered air-tight for a week or two according to the temperature and the degree of austereness of the fruit. At the end of the time they become sweet. "Other Methods-The process of sweetening is not merely limited to the above methods, but the fruit may be treated in several other ways; for instance, put new rice straws and dried haulms of sweet potato in about equal proportion in a vat, filling it about one-fifth full. To this add a little wood ashes and pour warm water over them. Stir up the straw so as to get it thoroughly wet. When the water is tepid, put in fruit to fill it one-quarter to one-third full and stir up to wet the fruit and imbed it in the straw. Cover the vat for five or seven days, after which time the fruit will be fit to eat. The fruits thus cured are not as sweet as by the Sake cask process."

Flat and conical Japan persimmons, with the small wild northern persimmon of America. Note difference between Japanese and American as to size