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Canned Red Peppers
Wash one peck red peppers, cut a slice from stem end of each, and remove seeds; then cut in thin strips by working around and around the peppers, using scissors or a sharp vegetable knife. Cover with boiling water, let stand two minutes, drain, and plunge into ice-water. Let stand ten minutes, again drain, and pack solidly into pint glass jars. Boil one quart vinegar and two cups sugar fifteen minutes. Pour over peppers to overflow jars, cover, and keep in a cold place.
This is an open-kettle pickle from the era before tested canning procedures, and the method it describes is no longer considered sound. The notes below explain the archaic measures and then why the preserving step fails.
- A peck of peppersA peck is eight dry quarts, which for whole sweet red peppers is on the order of 6 to 8 lb. That is a very large batch by modern standards; the recipe does not say how many jars it fills.
- "Red peppers" means sweet ones"Red peppers" probably means sweet ones -- the unqualified term in books of this period generally indicates ripe sweet bell or pimiento-type peppers rather than chillies, with heat usually signalled by words like chili, cayenne or "pepper pods."
- No heat processing at allThe jars are packed with cooled raw peppers, filled with hot syrup, covered and set aside. Nothing in the sequence brings the sealed jar to a temperature that would destroy spoilage organisms, and no boiling-water bath is called for.
- The acidity is not controlledSweet peppers are a low-acid vegetable. The vinegar of 1896 was of unstated and variable strength, the two cups of sugar dilute it further, and the water clinging to the blanched, ice-chilled strips dilutes it again once the jars are packed. There is no way to know the pH of the finished jar, and low-acid vegetables in a sealed anaerobic jar are the classic setting for Clostridium botulinum.
- "A cold place" is not refrigerationThe instruction assumes an unheated cellar or pantry, which in practice means anywhere from just above freezing to cool room temperature depending on the season. That is not a reliable control on anything, and the recipe gives no keeping time.
- The seal itselfThe recipe says only "cover," leaving the closure unspecified; whatever was used, a vacuum formed by the heat of the syrup alone is unreliable and gives little signal of whether the jar has failed.
- If you want pickled peppersUse a current tested recipe from a modern canning authority, which will specify vinegar of stated acidity, headspace and a timed water-bath process. Do not adapt the proportions above.
Pickled sweet red peppers belong to the long American tradition of putting up the late-summer garden in vinegar and sugar. This book was written at the moment when home preserving was moving from pure custom toward something the author could set down in level measurements, but the science lagged well behind the measuring cup: safe processing times for low-acid foods were not established until the twentieth century, and the open-kettle method described here remained common household practice for decades after. The instruction to cut the flesh "around and around" the pepper in a spiral produces long even strips from a hollow shell, and the blanch-then-ice-water step appears to be there to keep the strips bright and firm rather than to sterilise anything.