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Peach Preserves
Take any fine peaches that do not mash readily in cooking, pare carefully and remove pits; take sugar equal in weight to fruit, (or if to be sealed, three-quarters pound sugar to the pound of fruit), and water in proportion of a half pint to each pound of sugar. Boil pits in the water, adding more as it evaporates, to keep the proportion good, remove pits, add the sugar, clarify, and when the scum ceases to rise, add the fruit, a small quantity at a time ; cook slowly about ten minutes, skim out into a jar, add more, and SO on , add more, and so on until all are done, and then pour the boiling syrup over all. The next day drain off and boil syrup a few minutes only, and pour back, repeating daily until the fruit looks clear. Two or three times is generally sufficient.
The last time put up the preserves in small jars, and secure with paper as directed for jellies. If to be sealed in cans, the first boiling is sufficient , after which put into cans and seal immediately. The latter plan is preferable, as it takes less trouble and less sugar, while the natural flavor of the fruit is better retained. Many think peach preserves much nicer if made with peaches are preserved in the same way whole, except that they must be put on in clear water and boiled until so tender that they may be pierced with a silver fork before adding the sugar.
A classic weight-for-weight preserve, given in two versions: the old repeated-syrup method that produces translucent, candied fruit, and the quicker sealed-jar method the author plainly prefers. The instructions assume you can judge syrup by eye, so a few numbers help.
- The ratios in modern termsEqual weights of sugar and prepared fruit for the open-jar version, or 3/4 lb sugar per 1 lb fruit if you intend to seal it. A half pint of water per pound of sugar is one cup.
- Choose the right peach"Peaches that do not mash readily" means firm freestone fruit, ripe enough to be fragrant but still resistant to the thumb. Clingstones will fight the pitting and soft dead-ripe fruit will collapse into jam in the first ten minutes.
- ParingWith ripe fruit, a dip in boiling water for 30-45 seconds and then into ice water will usually let the skins slip off without a knife. On the firm peaches this recipe asks for the skins may not release, and paring is still the surer method.
- The pitsBoiling the stones in the syrup water is for the faint almond note in the kernel. Use the pits whole and unbroken, then remove them. Do not crack the stones to add the kernels: peach kernels are cyanogenic.
- "Clarify"In this period that usually meant beating in a little egg white, bringing the syrup up, and lifting off the coagulated scum. Skimming carefully as the syrup comes to a boil accomplishes the same thing for a clear result.
- Why the syrup is boiled off and poured backEach cycle concentrates the syrup slightly and lets sugar migrate into the fruit by osmosis without the hard boiling that would break it apart. That is what "until the fruit looks clear" means. Boil the drained syrup only a few minutes each day or you will end up with candy.
- Sealing and storage"Secure with paper as directed for jellies" and open-kettle sealing straight into cans are both obsolete. Current practice is to ladle the hot preserve into hot sterilised jars, leave 1/4 inch headspace, and process in a boiling-water bath; unprocessed jars keep in the refrigerator and should be treated as short-term. The high sugar and the acidity of peaches make this a low-risk preserve, but paper covers invite mould.
- The last sentenceThe closing line is garbled in the original printing. The sense of it is that whole peaches are preserved in the same way, except that they are first boiled in plain water until a silver fork pierces them easily, and only then is the sugar added.
Preserves of this kind sit at the point where fruit-keeping was still household work rather than a purchase, and the recipe records the exact moment the technology changed under the cook's hands. The older method it describes -- pound for pound of sugar, syrup drained and reboiled day after day until the fruit turns translucent, jars finished with a paper cover -- belongs to a world before reliable sealed glass, where sugar itself was the preservative and had to be present in quantity. The newer method, one boiling and into cans sealed immediately, reflects the spread of the screw-top and clamp-lid fruit jar through American kitchens in the second half of the 19th century. The author's aside that the sealed plan is "preferable, as it takes less trouble and less sugar, while the natural flavor of the fruit is better retained" is the whole argument for canning in a single sentence. Boiling the stones for their almond scent is an old confectioner's habit, the same instinct that puts a bitter-almond note in so many stone-fruit sweets; peaches and almonds are close botanical relatives, which is why the flavour reads as belonging to the fruit.