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Cherries
7 lbs. red cherries 3½ lbs. sugar 1½ ozs. whole cloves 2½ ozs. stick cinnamon 1/2 pint (1 cup) vinegar Wipe the cherries, then stone and drain them. Tie the spices in a muslin bag and heat them with the vinegar. When boiling, pour the vinegar over the cold cherries. Keep draining off and heating for four days. Then heat all together in a casserole and seal.
Egg-plants Lemon Vinegar
A spiced sour-cherry pickle built on the old cold-pack method: the hot spiced vinegar is poured over cold fruit and reheated daily so the cherries stay whole instead of collapsing. Plan on five days from start to jar.
- "Casserole" means the pan"Casserole" here most likely means the pan rather than a baked dish. Use a wide non-reactive pan — stainless or enamelled — since vinegar reacts with bare aluminium and cast iron.
- Which cherries"Red cherries" probably points to a tart variety — Montmorency, morello or similar — rather than dark sweet cherries, though the recipe does not specify. The heavy sugar-to-fruit ratio suits a sour cherry.
- The vinegarA half pint is a cup, as the original notes. Use standard 5% acidity cider or white wine vinegar. One cup for 7 lb of fruit is a light hand by modern pickling standards, and the keeping quality of the finished jar depends as much on the sugar as on the acid.
- The spices are not a misprint1½ oz whole cloves is roughly a third to a half cup, and 2½ oz stick cinnamon is a good handful of sticks. That is a heavy load by current taste; halving both still gives a pronounced spiced syrup. Keep them in the muslin bag so nothing needs picking out later.
- Why four days of drainingPouring the hot spiced liquid over cold fruit and repeating it daily is intended to firm the cherries so they stay whole instead of collapsing; note that the recipe speaks only of vinegar and never states at what point the sugar goes in. Boiling the fruit outright on day one gives jam-textured fruit in cloudy liquid. Each day, pour the liquid off, bring it back to a boil, and pour it over the cold cherries again.
- StoningPit over a bowl, though note the recipe says to drain the cherries rather than to save the juice. A hand pitter is worth the trouble at this volume; expect 7 lb of whole fruit to yield around 6 lb pitted.
- Sealing"Heat all together and seal" describes open-kettle canning, which is no longer considered sound for shelf storage regardless of acidity. Fill hot sterilised jars and process by a current tested method for pickled fruit, or simply refrigerate the jars and use them within a couple of months.
- Yield and useAbout five to six pints. Spiced cherries are a condiment, not a dessert — a spoonful alongside cold ham, duck, game, or a strong cheese, with the syrup used as a glaze or reduced into a pan sauce.
Spiced fruit pickles like this one seem to have had a familiar place on the late-Victorian and Edwardian table: sweet-sour preserves of cherries, peaches, crab apples and pears set out to cut the richness of cold roast meats. The slow method here — hot syrup over cold fruit, drained and reheated for days — appears to predate the book and turns up in English and American preserving manuals through the nineteenth century as a way to keep fruit whole. Its appearance in a casserole cookery book reflects what "casserole" once meant: the fireproof earthenware or enamelled pan itself, valued precisely because it would sit on the stove with vinegar in it without tainting the contents.