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Sweet Pickled Peaches
Make a syrup by boiling two pounds of brown sugar, one pint of vinegar and a one-ounce-stick of cinnamon for fifteen minutes. Select large, firm peaches. Dip each one in hot water and then rub off the down with a towel. Stick four cloves in each peach, put into the syrup and cook until soft. This syrup is sufficient for a half peck of peaches, but it is better to put only half this quantity of peaches into syrup at a time. Pears may be pickled in the same manner.
A classic sweet-sour spiced fruit pickle, meant as a relish alongside roast meat rather than as a dessert. The proportions are sound; what the original leaves out is how to keep it.
- Half a peck of peachesA peck of peaches runs 11-13 lb, so a half peck is roughly 6 lb, or 12 to 16 medium fruit. Following the recipe's own advice, work in two batches of about 3 lb each.
- A one-ounce stick of cinnamonAn ounce of bark, probably cassia, is on the order of eight to ten modern cinnamon sticks. Break it up so it gives up its flavour in fifteen minutes of boiling.
- Vinegar strengthUse a 5 percent cider or white wine vinegar, which is what commercial vinegar is standardised to now. Nineteenth-century household vinegar varied a good deal, and the acidity here is what keeps the pickle; do not dilute it or increase the water.
- Rubbing off the downA quick dip in hot water loosens the fuzz without loosening the skin, and that skin is what holds the fruit together during cooking. This is not blanching to peel.
- Choose firm, underripe fruitClingstones at the hard-ripe stage were the usual choice for pickling whole, and firmness matters more than the type: soft or overripe fruit will collapse into the syrup.
- Cook until soft means barely tenderSimmer gently and test with a skewer; whole peaches may need anywhere from ten to twenty minutes depending on size and ripeness. Lift the fruit out while the skewer still meets slight resistance; the peaches continue to soften as they sit in hot syrup.
- Finishing the syrupMany period recipes direct that the fruit be packed, the syrup boiled down until it lightly coats a spoon, and then poured over. If the syrup is thin the peaches will float and the top layer may darken.
- StorageThe recipe says nothing about keeping. Treat this as a refrigerator pickle, good for several weeks, or follow a current tested boiling-water-bath process with proper headspace and timing if you want it shelf-stable.
- Yield and servingSix pounds of fruit fills roughly five or six pint jars. One whole peach per person with pork, ham, duck or cold roast beef; the cloves stay in the fruit and are not eaten.
Spiced and sweet-pickled fruit belongs to a long Anglo-American habit of setting something sharp and sugary beside plain roast meat, a line that runs back through medieval sweet-sour sauces and reaches American kitchens as the sugar and vinegar barrel became cheap staples. By the time the Butterick Publishing Company issued its cook book in the early twentieth century, sweet pickled peaches were a fixture of the late-summer preserving season, made when orchard fruit was abundant and briefly worthless, and served all winter from the cellar shelf. Butterick was a dress-pattern house whose reach into American homes came through its magazines, and its cook book reflects that audience: a chapter of pickles and catsups sits as a matter of course beside the roasts, because a household that put up nothing in September ate very dully in February. Sticking whole cloves directly into fruit, rather than adding them loose to the syrup, is the older method and is often said to have been favoured because it perfumes each peach evenly while keeping the syrup clear.