Peach Butter
8 cupfuls of sliced peaches. 4 cupfuls of sugar. 2 cupfuls of water. The peaches need not be peeled, but should be rubbed in a coarse towel before slicing.
Put the water into a kettle or bright pan; then the peaches; shut in the steam and let cook at the back of the stove, or set on bricks, for an hour or longer. Then add the sugar, and do not leave it, as it burns very easily, but keep stirring with a broad wooden paddle while it boils one-half hour more. Keep in a jar in a cool place.
A simple long-cook fruit butter with an unusually high sugar ratio. The only real difficulties are the archaic heat management and the storage instruction, which does not meet modern expectations.
- The hinge: sugar goes in lateThe peaches break down in plain water first, with the sugar held back for the final half hour. Once the sugar is in, the recipe says not to leave the pan, as it burns very easily -- hence the constant stirring with a broad wooden paddle.
- "Back of the stove, or set on bricks"Both are ways of getting a gentle, indirect heat from a wood or coal range. On a modern hob, use the lowest setting with a heavy-bottomed pan, or a heat diffuser; the fruit should barely bubble for that first hour.
- Shut in the steamLid on for the first hour so the peaches stew in their own moisture. Lid off for the final boil with the sugar, so water evaporates and the butter thickens.
- Rubbing in a coarse towelThis is fuzz removal rather than washing: rubbing unpeeled peaches in a rough towel takes off the down, and the skins then cook down more or less invisibly.
- Skins and stonesSkins add pectin and colour, but they will not fully dissolve. If you want a smooth butter, pass the mixture through a food mill or sieve after the first hour and before adding the sugar. Stones out, obviously.
- Knowing when it is doneHalf an hour is a guide, not a rule. The butter is ready when a spoonful mounded on a cold plate holds its shape and no watery ring seeps out.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. With four cups of sugar going into eight cups of fruit, expect appreciably more than three cups of finished butter, so have extra jars ready.
- Storage, read carefully"Keep in a jar in a cool place" assumed a cold cellar and fairly quick consumption. There is no sterilising, sealing, or processing step here. Refrigerate it and eat it within a few weeks, or freeze it; for shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested water-bath canning procedure rather than this line.
Fruit butters are a preserving strategy rather than a dish: cook fruit down until its own solids carry the flavour, sweeten heavily, and let evaporation do the work that a cellar and a cool jar cannot. The technique is most associated in America with the Pennsylvania German apple butter kettles, stirred for hours over an outdoor fire, and peach, pear and quince butters followed the same method on a smaller, indoor scale. The instruction to set the pan on bricks is a reminder of how much of nineteenth-century cookery was about finding a slow spot on a stove that had only one real setting: hot.