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Peach Preserves
Pare and stone the desired quantity of fruit. Weigh and allow an equal portion of sugar. For each pound of sugar allow one-half pint of water and the juice of one lemon. Make a syrup of the sugar, water and lemon juice, and when it nearly strings or is at the proper density put the fruit in carefully, being sure the kettle is sufficiently large so that the fruit is not crowded. Cook below boiling until the peaches are transparent. Pour into hot glasses and cool. Cover with paper, gluing securely to the glass.
Estes gives a ratio rather than a quantity, which makes this easy to scale: equal weights of peaches and sugar, then a half pint of water and one lemon per pound of sugar. The only real technique is holding the syrup below a boil so the fruit clarifies instead of collapsing.
- The hinge: below boilingPeaches held at a bare simmer (roughly 180-190F) slowly exchange water for syrup and turn glossy and translucent. A rolling boil bursts the cells, and you get shreds in thin syrup instead of whole transparent slices. Estes gives no time; allow at least half an hour.
- "Nearly strings"This points at the thread stage, around 230F on a candy thermometer, when syrup falls from the spoon in a fine thread rather than drops; Estes wants the syrup just short of that. Adding fruit at this density is what keeps the pieces plump.
- Half a pint of waterOne cup per pound of sugar. A pound of sugar is a little over two cups, so this is a fairly thin starting syrup that you concentrate before the fruit goes in.
- Paring peachesRather than peeling with a knife, dip them 30-45 seconds in boiling water and into ice water; the skins slip off and you lose far less flesh. Freestone varieties are easier to halve and stone, though the recipe does not specify a type.
- The kettleTake the instruction about crowding seriously. Use the widest pan you have, in batches if needed, so the fruit sits in one layer and the syrup can circulate.
- "Hot glasses" and paper coversThese are tumblers or jelly glasses sealed with glued paper, sometimes over a paraffin disc. That method is obsolete: it does not exclude air reliably, and surface mold was a common hazard with such closures. For anything you intend to keep at room temperature, follow a current tested water-bath canning procedure for peach preserves.
- YieldThe lemon juice matters beyond flavor: it supplies acid that helps the syrup set and keeps the sugar from crystallizing.
Good Things to Eat (1911) is the work of Rufus Estes, born enslaved in Tennessee in 1857, who cooked for Pullman private dining cars and later for the subsidiary laboratories of U.S. Steel in Chicago; it is generally recognized as one of the earliest published cookbooks by an African American chef. A canning and preserving chapter was standard equipment in a book of this date, when the summer fruit glut had to be captured in sugar or lost. Equal weights of fruit and sugar is the old European preserving proportion, high enough that the syrup itself resists spoilage, which is why cooks of the period could get away with nothing more than a sheet of paper glued over the glass.