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Peach, Pear, Quince and Apple Pickle
1 pound fruit. 1/2 pound sugar. 1/2 pint vinegar.
Dissolve sugar and vinegar together; put a small quantity of fruit; boil until you can stick a straw through it. Season with cinnamon and mace. Rescald the vinegar, and pour over the fruit for nine mornings.--Mrs. Dr. J. SWEET PICKLE. (Honolulu Melon.) 4 pints vinegar, very clear. 4 pints sugar. 1 ounce cloves. 1 ounce cinnamon. Put all to boil, then drop in the melons, as much as the vinegar will cover, and boil fifteen minutes. Put them in jars, and every day, for two or three days, pour off the vinegar, boil it over, and pour on the pickles until they seem done.--Mrs. M. W. T.
Two versions of the same idea: fruit held in a hot sweet-sour syrup that is drained, reboiled and poured back day after day until the fruit is saturated and the syrup thick. The repeated scalding is the whole technique, not a fussy flourish.
- Why nine morningsEach reboil concentrates the syrup by evaporation and drives sugar and acid further into the fruit without cooking it to mush, which a single long boil would do. Skip the repetition and you are likelier to end up with fruit floating in thin, watery vinegar that keeps poorly.
- MeasuresHalf a pint is one cup, so the first recipe is 1 lb fruit to 1 cup vinegar; its sugar is given by weight, and 1/2 lb granulated sugar is a generous cup. Four pints of sugar in the second recipe means sugar measured by volume, roughly 3 1/2 to 4 lb, not by weight.
- Vinegar strengthNineteenth-century household cider vinegar varied widely. Use a commercial vinegar labelled 5 percent acidity; cider or white wine vinegar suits fruit better than distilled white, which tastes harsh against peaches and pears.
- "Boil until you can stick a straw through it"The test is for tenderness, not doneness of the syrup. Firm pears and quinces may take 20 to 30 minutes; ripe peaches will be there in 8 to 10. Pull the fruit the moment a skewer slides in cleanly, since it goes on softening in the hot syrup.
- SpicesAn ounce of cloves and an ounce of cinnamon means whole spices, tied in cloth or a tea ball so they can be lifted out. Ground spice at that quantity would turn the syrup muddy and bitter. Mace is the outer covering of nutmeg; blade mace is best here, and a pinch of ground nutmeg is the nearest substitute.
- Honolulu melonProbably a market or seedsman's name of the period for a muskmelon; the identification is uncertain. Any dense, barely ripe melon works, cut in chunks with the seeds and soft centre removed; overripe melon collapses on the first boil.
- Fruit preparationPeaches are best peeled (a 30-second dip in boiling water loosens the skin), pears and quinces peeled and cored, apples peeled and quartered. Quinces need the longest cooking of the four and are worth doing on their own.
- StorageThe original assumes a cool cellar and open jars topped with hot syrup. For shelf storage today, follow a current tested procedure for pickled fruit with a boiling-water process; otherwise keep the finished jars in the refrigerator, where they will hold for months.
- YieldThe first formula scales directly: 4 lb fruit, 4 cups sugar, 4 cups vinegar fills roughly three pint jars. The syrup left over is good on ham or cold pork.
Sweet pickled fruit was a fixed feature of the Southern table, set out alongside cold ham, turkey and roast pork much as chutney was on an Anglo-Indian one; the sharp, spiced sweetness was there to cut fat, and a jar of pickled peaches was often said to be a standard offering at Christmas dinner. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, gathered such formulas from named contributors in Virginia and neighbouring states, which is why these two appear side by side under initials rather than as a single edited method. The nine-morning scalding routine predates reliable home canning: with no way to seal a jar hermetically, cooks relied on sugar, acid and repeated heating to make fruit keep.