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Canned Cherries
Use large white or red cherries. Wash, remove stems, then follow Directions for Canning.
This entry is a cross-reference rather than a full procedure: it sends the cook to the book's general "Directions for Canning," which reflect turn-of-the-century open-kettle practice. Nothing on this page establishes a safe process, and the era's method has been superseded outright.
- No process time or temperatureThe instruction stops at washing and stemming. There is no jar-processing time, no water-bath or pressure step, and no headspace figure, so there is no way to know that the contents of the jar ever reached a temperature that destroys spoilage organisms.
- Open-kettle fillingCanning directions of this period commonly had the cook boil fruit in syrup, ladle it into hot jars, and seal at once, relying on the heat of the fruit alone. If the book's master directions follow that pattern, current guidance rejects it for all fruits, because the jar contents and the sealing surface are not held at temperature long enough and recontamination during filling is not addressed.
- Sweet cherries sit near the acidity lineSweet cherries sit nearer the acidity line than sour ones -- Sour cherries are reliably acid; sweet varieties, including the blush-yellow sorts such as Royal Ann/Napoleon, are usually given at about pH 3.8-4.5, closer to the 4.6 threshold below which acidity alone restrains Clostridium botulinum. Current recipes for sweet cherries specify a measured boiling-water process for this reason.
- Mold is not a cosmetic problemSurface molds in an under-processed fruit jar metabolise acid and raise the pH of the contents, which can open the door to organisms the acidity was meant to hold back. Advice to skim mould and use the remainder appears in older household writing; it is no longer acceptable.
- Obsolete closuresJars of this period typically used a rubber ring with a zinc cap, a glass lid, or a wire bail. Such closures cannot be checked for vacuum the way a modern two-piece lid can, and rubber rings of unknown age were a chronic source of failed seals.
- If you want canned cherriesUse a current tested recipe from a state extension service or the USDA's canning guide, which will give you the syrup, the acid, the headspace and the boiling-water processing time for your jar size and altitude.
Fruit canning is one of the most confident chapters in the domestic cookery of the period and also the most dated: glass jars with rubber-ring closures had become cheap and widely available, and a household that put up its own cherries, berries and peaches in July ate fruit in February for very little money. The brevity of this entry is the point — cherries need almost nothing said about them beyond which sort to buy. The distinction between "white" and "red" cherries appears to be a market distinction of the day: white was generally used for the blush-yellow sweet varieties, red for the darker sweets and the sour pie cherries. The scientific basis for safe home canning — the role of pH, the behaviour of C. botulinum, the need for measured processing times — was worked out largely in the decades after books of this kind appeared, which is why such canning directions read as confidently as they do and why they should not be followed.