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Canned Quinces and Apples
4 pounds quinces 2 pounds apples 2 pounds sugar 1 quart water Pare and quarter quinces and apples, let stand in cold water to prevent discoloration. Cook in boiling water until tender, then simmer in sugar and water syrup ten minutes. Arrange fruit in jars, fill with syrup, and seal. 4 pounds raspberries
This is open-kettle canning: hot fruit is ladled into jars, sealed, and set aside with no processing after the lid goes on. That method was standard in 1900 and has been off the recommended list for decades. The notes below explain why, along with a few points about the text itself.
- No processing step at allThe jars are filled and sealed with nothing more than the heat of the syrup. Nothing sterilises the headspace, the underside of the lid, or the jar rim after filling, and the seal that forms as the jar cools is unreliable — it can fail weeks later without any visible sign.
- Mould and yeast, not botulismQuinces and apples are high-acid fruit, so Clostridium botulinum is not the hazard here. The realistic outcomes are mould growth, yeast fermentation, and heat-resistant spoilage moulds such as Byssochlamys, which survives short heating and can grow in sealed fruit jars. Current preserving practice exists because failures were common enough to warrant it.
- No sterilisation of jars or lidsThe recipe assumes the reader knows how to prepare jars and closures; nothing here specifies it. Jars of the period commonly used zinc caps with rubber rings, a closure system that behaves differently from a modern two-piece lid, so the original instruction cannot simply be carried across to today's equipment.
- If you want canned quincesUse a current tested recipe from a reliable preserving authority, with a specified boiling-water-bath time for your jar size and altitude. Do not adapt the timings above.
- The stray last line"4 pounds raspberries" appears to be the opening ingredient line of the recipe that follows, carried over into this transcription. It is not part of the quince recipe.
- Quinces themselvesMost quince varieties are hard and astringent raw, so the cooking in boiling water before the syrup is not optional softening but the whole point. Quince is also very high in pectin, higher than apple, which is why it sets readily.
- The acidulated holding waterCut quince browns fast. Cold water slows it, but modern cooks often add lemon juice or a pinch of ascorbic acid to the holding water, which works better than plain water.
Quinces were a fixture of American kitchen gardens through the nineteenth century and largely disappeared from them in the twentieth, which is why a 1907 book can list them alongside apples as an everyday preserving fruit and a modern reader has to go looking. Their high pectin and high acid made them the preserver's friend before commercial pectin was available: quince stretched into apple, as here, gave a set and a perfume that apples alone could not. Lowney's Cook Book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and it carried a full general repertoire — preserving, meats, breads — alongside the sponsor's product. The preserving section reflects the state of home practice at the time, before the United States Department of Agriculture and the state extension services began issuing the tested, timed canning schedules that superseded open-kettle work.