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Peach Butter
1 peck peaches 2 quarts cider boiled 2 tablespoons lemon juice sugar Pare and cut peaches in small pieces; add cider and lemon juice, boil until thick, stirring constantly; add sugar, if not sufficiently sweet. Fill jars and seal. 4 pounds grapes 4 pounds sugar
A long-boil fruit butter with no added sugar unless the peaches need it. The one thing to fix is the sealing method: open-kettle filling was standard in 1907 and is not considered reliable now.
- A peck of peachesA peck is a dry quarter-bushel, about 12 to 13 pounds of peaches, which is roughly 40 to 50 medium fruit. Pared and pitted that yields something near 10 to 11 pounds of usable flesh, so scale down freely -- a quarter batch behaves the same.
- "2 quarts cider boiled"The line is ambiguous. It most likely means two quarts of sweet cider that has been boiled down (boiled cider, reduced by half or more, was a pantry staple and is sold again today), though it can be read as two quarts of cider added and then boiled with the fruit. Either way, use unfermented sweet cider, not hard cider or vinegar.
- SealingFilling jars from the kettle and sealing, with no processing, does not produce a dependable seal by current standards. Process filled half-pints or pints in a boiling-water bath according to a current canning guide, or simply refrigerate the finished butter and use it within a few weeks.
- Stirring constantlyThis is not optional advice. A thick fruit purée scorches on the bottom the moment it stops moving, and scorch flavours the whole batch. A heavy-bottomed wide pan, low heat and a flat-edged wooden spatula are the practical answer; the wide pan also speeds evaporation.
- Judging thicknessExpect several hours of reduction from a full batch, often three or more depending on pan width and heat. It is done when a spoonful mounded on a cold plate holds its shape and no watery ring runs out around the edge.
- Sugar lastAdding sugar only at the end, and only if needed, is deliberate: sugar makes the purée catch and burn far more readily during the long boil, and modern dessert peaches are often sweet enough that none is wanted.
- PeelingThirteen pounds of peaches peel much faster if dipped 30 to 60 seconds in boiling water and then into cold; the skins slip. Freestone varieties save further time over clingstones.
- The stray lineThe "4 pounds grapes, 4 pounds sugar" at the end belongs to the next recipe in the book, not to this one. Ignore it here.
- YieldA full peck reduced to butter gives roughly 6 to 8 pints, depending on how far you take it.
Fruit butters are the thrifty end of preserving: fruit cooked down until its own pectin and sugars thicken it, with far less sugar than jam and no jelly bag. Apple butter is the familiar American example, and peach butter follows the same method with the same New England shortcut of boiled cider, which supplies acidity, sweetness and body all at once and was a common substitute for sugar in the era before cheap refined sugar. Lowney's Cook Book (1907) was compiled for the Walter M. Lowney chocolate company and is best remembered for its chocolate work, but it was built as a complete household manual, with a full preserving section aimed at cooks putting up a peck of fruit at a time in late summer.