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Spiced Peaches
Take nine pounds ripe peaches, rub them with a coarse towel, and halve them. Put four pounds sugar and one pint good vinegar in the kettle with cloves, cinnamon, and mace. When the syrup is formed, throw in the peaches a few at a time; when clear, take them out and put in more. Boil the syrup till quite rich; pour it over the peaches.
Cherries can be pickled in the same way.--Mrs. C. C.
A sweet-sour peach pickle of the sort kept on the sideboard to eat with ham. The proportions are sound; what the original leaves out is how the fruit is finally stored.
- Rub, don't peel"Rub them with a coarse towel" means scouring off the fuzz with a rough cloth so the skins can stay on. Freestone peaches, just ripe and still firm, halve and stone cleanly; anything soft enough to bruise under the towel will collapse in the syrup.
- The kettleA preserving kettle was wide, shallow and often unlined copper or brass. Use a broad nonreactive pan — stainless or enamel — since vinegar will pit bare aluminium and pull metal off copper.
- ProportionsNine pounds of fruit, four pounds (about 9 cups) of sugar and one pint of vinegar. Use vinegar labelled 5 percent acidity; nineteenth-century cider vinegar varied wildly in strength and the acid is what makes the pickle keep.
- SpicesNo quantities are given. Roughly two tablespoons whole cloves, three or four cinnamon sticks and a tablespoon of blade mace is in the usual range for this much fruit. Tie them in cheesecloth unless you want cloves embedded in every peach.
- "When clear"This is the hinge. Peaches go from opaque to translucent when the syrup has penetrated — usually five to ten minutes for a batch, depending on ripeness. Cooking in small lots keeps the syrup at temperature and the halves intact; crowding the pan stews them to mush.
- Boiling the syrup richAfter the last fruit comes out, the syrup is reduced alone until it thickens and coats a spoon. It will thicken further as it cools, so stop short of candy stage or the pickle sets solid in the jar.
- Storage, which the recipe omitsThe recipe does not say how the fruit is finally kept. Packed hot into jars and refrigerated, these keep for weeks. For shelf storage, follow a current tested canning procedure for pickled peaches rather than trusting the pour-over alone to seal anything.
- YieldNot stated in the original; nine pounds of halved fruit in syrup fills a good many pints.
- CherriesSour cherries take to the same syrup but need only a minute or two in the pan; stone them or expect the pits to loosen and drift.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, gathers contributions from some 250 Virginia housekeepers, most signed only with initials as this one is — "Mrs. C. C." would have been recognised by her neighbours and by nobody else. Spiced or pickled peaches belong to the large family of sweet-sour fruit preserves that Anglo-American cooks kept year-round to cut rich meat: the same logic as mustard fruits in Italy or chutney in Anglo-Indian cookery, and in Virginia they were served above all with cured ham. Peaches were abundant and perishable across the upper South, and a household with a full orchard had no choice but to preserve in bulk, which is why nine pounds is a modest batch here rather than an ambitious one. The instruction to lift the fruit out and reduce the syrup separately reflects an era before reliable thermometers, when cooks judged doneness by the fruit turning clear and the syrup sheeting off a spoon.