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Pickled Peaches
Take peaches pretty ripe, but not mellow; wipe with flannel as smooth as possible; stick a few cloves in each one. One pound sugar to one pint vinegar. Allow three pounds sugar and three pints vinegar to one pan peaches. Scald the vinegar, then put on the peaches; boil till nearly soft, then take out and boil the vinegar a little longer, and pour over the fruit--Mrs. G. P. Pickled Peaches.
Put the peaches in strong brine, and let them remain three or four days; take them out, and wipe them dry; put them in a pot with allspice, pepper, ginger, and horseradish; boil some turmeric in your vinegar. Pour it on hot.--Miss E. T.
Two contributed methods for the same preserve — one a sweet vinegar pickle, one a brine-then-spice pickle. Both stop short of telling you how the fruit is to be sealed or kept, which is the reason they cannot be followed today.
- No sealing or processing stepNeither recipe says anything about jars, closures, headspace, or a boiling-water bath; the fruit is simply covered with hot liquid and left. A pickle put up this way and stored at room temperature has no verified acidity or seal, so use a current tested recipe for sweet pickled peaches instead.
- "Strong brine" is not a measurementMiss E. T.'s version rests entirely on a salt strength she does not give, held three or four days at whatever the kitchen temperature was. Without a stated salt-to-water ratio and a controlled temperature there is no way to know whether the cure is preservative or merely salty, and a fermenting brine at summer room temperature is where spoilage organisms take hold.
- "One pan peaches" is unrecoverableMrs. G. P. gives a clean ratio — one pound sugar to one pint vinegar — but then pegs three pounds and three pints to a "pan," a vessel whose size was obvious in her kitchen and is guesswork now. The recipe's actual sugar-to-fruit proportion cannot be reconstructed.
- Vinegar of unknown strengthPeriod vinegar was often homemade cider vinegar of variable and sometimes low acidity. Modern pickling depends on a known 5 percent acetic acid, and no recipe from this era can be assumed to reach a safe final pH.
- Wiping with flannelMost likely fuzz removal rather than cleaning: the recipe asks for the fruit to be wiped 'as smooth as possible', which suggests taking the down off the skin.
- Turmeric in the vinegarChiefly a colourant, giving the yellow-gold cast associated with spiced pickles. Horseradish appears frequently in period pickle receipts, and was sometimes credited with helping the pickle keep.
- "Pretty ripe, but not mellow"The one piece of instruction that still holds. Fruit at the firm-but-fragrant stage keeps its shape; anything soft collapses into the syrup during the boil.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, is a collection of contributions from named and initialed housekeepers, which is why the same dish appears twice in two hands — Mrs. G. P.'s sweet syrup pickle and Miss E. T.'s brined and spiced one. Sweet pickled peaches were a standing feature of the Southern table, put up in high summer and brought out beside cured ham, cold roast meats, and holiday dinners, where their sharp sweetness cut the salt. The two versions represent the two main traditions of fruit pickling: the sugar-and-vinegar preserve, closer to a conserve, and the older salt-cured, hard-spiced pickle flavored with allspice, ginger, pepper and horseradish and tinted with turmeric. Cloves are stuck directly into each peach.