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Sweet Apple Pickles
7 lbs. fruit. 3 1/2 lbs. sugar. 1 pt. vinegar. 1 t whole cloves 2 t stick cinnamon Pare apples, cut in halves or quarters and steam until they can be pierced with a straw. Boil the vinegar, sugar and spices for five minutes. Pack steamed apples in jars, fill with the hot syrup and seal. Peaches may be used in place of apples.
Mrs. R. S. Triggs.
This is an open-kettle pickle: hot syrup poured over hot fruit, lid on, no further processing. The method was standard in church cookbooks of the period and is no longer considered a safe way to put up jars, and in this case the acid ratio that would make the pickle safe is not recoverable from the text.
- Why it fails as writtenPacking steamed fruit into jars and sealing with hot syrup does not sterilise the contents or produce a reliable vacuum. Modern practice requires a measured boiling-water bath for high-acid preserves; a lid that merely pops down as the jar cools is not evidence that the jar is safe.
- The missing ratioPickled fruit is safe only because the vinegar brings the whole jar below pH 4.6. Without stated quantities of vinegar and sugar against a stated weight of apples, there is no way to know whether this syrup was acid enough. Use a current tested recipe for sweet spiced apples or peaches if you want to can them.
- Vinegar is not what it wasHousehold vinegar strength varied more than it does now and was not standardised. Canning recipes today specify 5 per cent acidity for exactly this reason, and older proportions cannot simply be carried across.
- "t" in this bookThe abbreviation is inconsistent in collections of this kind; here it most likely means teaspoons of whole cloves and stick cinnamon, both used whole so the syrup stays clear rather than muddy.
- Steaming to the strawThe doneness test is sound and worth borrowing: fruit steamed only until a straw or skewer slides in keeps its shape, while fruit boiled to tenderness collapses into sauce once the hot syrup hits it.
- If you want the flavourThe same syrup and spices make a fine refrigerator pickle for a jar or two of apples or peaches, kept cold and eaten within a couple of weeks. That avoids the shelf-storage question entirely.
Sweet spiced fruit pickles were a fixture of the American Midwestern table, set out alongside roast meat much as a chutney or cranberry sauce would be now, and community cookbooks of the era commonly carry several versions. Libertyville sits in Lake County, Illinois, in orchard and dairy country, and a recipe that ends "peaches may be used in place of apples" is a recipe written by someone putting up whatever the season delivered in quantity. Whole cloves and stick cinnamon, rather than ground, keep the syrup clear; some cooks tied the spices in a muslin bag so they could be lifted out before the jars were filled, though this recipe does not say so. Church cookbooks like this one were sold to raise money for the congregation, and the contributions were signed, which is why the page carries Mrs. R. S. Triggs's name rather than a title alone.