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Peach Preserves
Cling-stone peaches are better than free-stone, for they keep their shape better. Wash, peel, and remove the stones if desired. If the stones are removed, cut the peaches in quarters. Use three-fourths pound of sugar, and three-fourths cup of water to each pound of prepared fruit. Boil the sugar and water for ten minutes. Skim, add the fruit and cook rapidly until it is transparent. Seal in clean hot jars.
A plain open-kettle preserve: fruit poached in heavy syrup until it turns translucent. The only part that has genuinely changed is the sealing.
- Sealing is the one thing to update"Seal in clean hot jars" means the open-kettle method, where the hot preserve alone is expected to sterilise the jar and pull a vacuum. It is no longer considered reliable; fill sterilised jars to a quarter-inch headspace and process in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes (longer at altitude), or skip canning and keep the jars in the refrigerator for a few weeks.
- Cling-stone peachesClingstones hold to the pit and have firmer, less juicy flesh, which is why they keep their quarters intact. Most supermarket peaches sold for eating are freestone; clingstones turn up at orchards and canneries, and yellow freestones picked slightly underripe are the practical substitute.
- PeelingDip the peaches in boiling water for 30 to 45 seconds and into ice water, and the skins slip off. Ripe fruit peels far more easily than hard fruit.
- The sugar ratioThree-quarters pound sugar and three-quarters cup water per pound of prepared fruit works out to roughly 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar per pound. Weigh the peaches after peeling and pitting, not before.
- Boiling the syrup ten minutesThis is to dissolve the sugar completely and drive off some water so the syrup is heavy enough to penetrate the fruit. Do not let it colour.
- "Until transparent"Depending on pan and batch size this can take anywhere from about a quarter of an hour to half an hour of hard boiling. The flesh loses its opaque look as syrup replaces the water in the cells; a syrup reading in the region of 220F is one rough check, though the recipe itself goes by appearance. Stir gently or the quarters break up.
- SkimThe foam is impurities and fine debris thrown up by the sugar. Lift it off with a spoon before the fruit goes in, or it will cloud the finished jars.
- No paraffinOlder books often finish preserves with a paraffin wax seal. Use two-piece canning lids instead; wax seals crack and admit mould.
Butterick published this in a period when the household preserving shelf was still the main way a family ate summer fruit in February, and the chapter's logic is arithmetical: a fixed weight of sugar to a fixed weight of fruit, because sugar in that concentration is what keeps the jar. The distinction the recipe opens with mattered commercially as well as domestically — clingstone peaches were the canner's fruit, prized because the halves and quarters survived processing intact, while freestones were grown for the fresh market. The instruction to boil the syrup first and add the fruit after is the classic "preserve" method as distinct from jam: the aim is whole, translucent pieces suspended in heavy syrup rather than a broken-down spread, and the transparency the recipe watches for is the visible sign that syrup has moved into the fruit and displaced its water.