Peach Syrup
Peel and mash five pounds of peaches, and cook slowly in one quart of cider vinegar and one quart of water. Add a small piece of cinnamon and one ounce of whole cloves tied in a piece of muslin. When the peaches are cooked to a soft pulp strain through a cheesecloth, and add two and one half pounds of sugar and cook twenty minutes. Pour at once into sterilized jars and seal. The pulp may be made into peach butter.
This is a shrub — a sweet-sour vinegar syrup meant to be diluted with cold or sparkling water, not poured over pancakes. Everything hinges on that: the vinegar is the point, and the finished syrup should taste aggressively tart straight from the jar.
- How to serve itThe book gives no dilution, because a shrub is assumed. Start at one part syrup to five or six parts cold water or soda, over ice, and adjust. Undiluted it will taste like sweetened vinegar.
- Vinegar strengthCider vinegar sold today is usually around 5 percent acetic acid, though bottles vary and the legal minimum is lower; the recipe says nothing about the strength it assumed. Do not substitute a high-strength cleaning vinegar, and avoid drinking vinegars or shrub bases already sweetened, which will throw the sugar off.
- Quantities in modern termsFive pounds of peaches is about 15 to 20 medium fruit; a quart is 4 cups; two and a half pounds of sugar is about 5 1/2 cups. One ounce of whole cloves is a generous 1/4 cup — a lot, and it will dominate if left to steep after straining, so pull the muslin bag out with the pulp.
- PeelingSkip the paring knife. Score the peaches, drop them in boiling water for 30 to 45 seconds, then into ice water, and the skins slip off. Freestone varieties are far less trouble than clingstone.
- The first cooking"Cook slowly" means a bare simmer, uncovered, until the fruit collapses — usually 30 to 45 minutes. A hard boil drives off the vinegar's aroma and leaves only the sharpness.
- The twenty minutes after sugarThis is a syrup, not a jelly, so it needs no set. Twenty minutes at a steady simmer thickens it slightly and dissolves the sugar fully; longer will push it toward candy and dull the fruit.
- Sealing"Pour at once into sterilized jars and seal" is open-kettle canning, which is no longer recommended. The mixture is high in both acid and sugar, but for shelf storage process the filled jars in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes. Otherwise refrigerate and use within a couple of months.
- The pulpWorth following up on. Push the strained pulp through a sieve to remove skins and spice fragments, sweeten to taste, and cook it down slowly into a thick, sharp peach butter.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to a small genre of books published as national prohibition came into view: collections of "cups that cheer" for hosts who still wanted something interesting in the glass. Fruit shrubs like this one were the obvious answer, because they were already old. Vinegar-and-sugar fruit syrups were a standard American farm preserve through the nineteenth century aknown known — raspberry vinegar was the best known — valued because the acid preserved the fruit, the sugar preserved the acid, and a spoonful in cold water made a drink for haying season. The name is generally traced to the Arabic sharba, to drink, by way of the same root that gives us sherbet and syrup. The spicing is of a piece with the pickled-peach tradition of the period: an ounce of whole cloves and a stick of cinnamon, the same spice bag flavoring both the sweet-sour fruit in the jar and the syrup drawn off it.