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Canned Berries
Blackberries, blueberries, huckleberries, raspberries, loganberries, gooseberries and strawberries should be canned as soon as possible after picking. Hull or stem; place in strainer and wash by lifting up and down in pan of cold water.
Pack into hot sterilized glass jars, using care not to crush fruit. To insure a close pack, put a 2 or 3 inch layer of berries on the bottom of the jar and press down gently with a spoon. Continue in this manner with other layers until jar is filled. Boiling water or boiling thin or medium syrup should be poured over the fruit at once. Loosely seal. Sterilize 16 minutes in boiling water. Remove jars, tighten covers, invert to test the seal and cool. Label and store.
A general method rather than a single recipe, written for the screw-band and rubber-ring jars of the period. The technique is sound for high-acid fruit, but the hardware and the safety margins have both changed.
- The hinge: berries are high-acid fruitThat acidity is why a boiling-water bath is sufficient here and why the same treatment would be dangerous for beans or corn. Do not extend this method to low-acid produce, and do not add anything alkaline to the pack.
- Use a current tested processing scheduleThe flat 16 minutes takes no account of jar size or altitude. Modern tested times for berries in a boiling-water canner run roughly 15 minutes for pints and 20 for quarts at sea level, with further time added as elevation rises; consult a current guide from a national extension service before processing.
- "Loosely seal"This instruction belongs to zinc caps and rubber rings, which had to vent during processing. With modern two-piece lids, apply the band fingertip tight and leave it alone — the lid vents on its own and the band is not retightened afterward.
- Do not tighten or invertTightening covers after processing and turning the jars over will break the forming seal and can drive syrup under the lid. Set the jars upright on a towel, undisturbed, for 12 to 24 hours, then check the seal by pressing the centre of the lid.
- Thin and medium syrupDefinitions vary between sources; thin syrup is roughly one part sugar to two or three parts water, medium noticeably sweeter. Boil until clear and pour hot, leaving half an inch of headspace and running a thin spatula around the inside of the jar to release air.
- Which berries take the packBlueberries, huckleberries, gooseberries and firm blackberries hold up to raw packing. Strawberries and ripe raspberries collapse and float; they are better made into preserves or frozen.
- YieldPublished averages reckon on roughly 1 3/4 to 2 lb of berries per quart jar, varying with the berry and the closeness of the pack.
- WashingLifting the fruit up and down in cold water rather than running water over it is still the right method — it keeps the berries intact and lets grit and leaves settle.
The New Royal Cook Book is one of the promotional volumes issued by the Royal Baking Powder Company, and it carried a full section on putting up fruit — a subject every household still handled itself. Home canning in glass had been practical since the mid-nineteenth century, when the screw-top jar with a rubber sealing ring came into general use, and it was pushed hard during the First World War, when government and extension bulletins urged families to preserve garden and wild fruit as a patriotic economy. The list of berries here is telling: huckleberries in particular were gathered rather than bought, and the instruction to can them "as soon as possible after picking" reflects a short supply chain. The advice to invert jars to test the seal was standard in period manuals and is now specifically discouraged, one of the clearer examples of canning guidance being overturned by later testing.