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Preserves and Pickles
BRANDIED PEACHES. - Put fine large freestone peaches into a weak solution of hot soda-water only until the fur is losened sufficiently to rub off with a coarse cloth, make a syrup of white sugar allowing half a pound sugar to one of fruit, when boiling add fruit and boil for five minutes, remove fruit and boil syrup fifteen minutes longer, or till thick, add one pint of brandy for each pound of fruit and take syrup at once from fire and pour while hot over fruit, (in glass jars,) and seal; if a reddish juice oozes from fruit while draining, pour it off before adding clear syrup; pears must be pared with a knife before being brandied. Plums and appricots are brandied by this receipe pricking before dropping in syrup to prevent bursting; the large amber colored and blue are best. Cherries are similarly brandied using however, one pound of sugar to one of fruit; use the short stemmed bright red cherries in bunches, not too ripe lest skins crack; be careful to cork all fruits tightly. - Mrs. Judge W. Jones, St. Joe, Mo.
SWEET PICKLED PEACHES. - Prepare a syrup in the proportion of one quart best cider vinegar to three pints brown sugar; boil and skim. Peel fruit by placing in a wire basket, plunging into boiling hot water, then in cold water, so as to readily remove skin; to spice use two teaspoons of whole cloves and four sticks of cinnamon to a gallon of fruit; many prefer to stick a few cloves in each peach and add broken cinnamon to syrup. Throw peaches in boiling syrup for five minutes, remove them into a jar, boil syrup until quite thick, pour over fruit and tie covers on jars; this is a German style of preparing them.-L. A. Clarkson, Atlanta, Ga. GREEN TOMATO PRESERVES. - Make a syrup of seven pounds sugar; take eight pounds small green tomatoes, pierce with a fork and add when syrup boils; add juice of four lemons and one ounce of mace and ginger, mixed. Boil all slowly until fruit is clear, then remove with a perforated skimmer, cool on dishes; boil syrup till thick, put fruit in jars and cover with hot syrup. A favorite preserve, and very nice if directions be strictly followed.-M. Harland, Virginia.
WALNUT CATSUP. - Crush to a pulp one fourth peck of green nuts size of hickory nut, rind and all, place in a stew jar and cover with strong vinegar, let stand twenty-four hours, then put in a stout cloth and press all juice out, boil fifteen minutes, clarifying with beaten white of an egg before boiling begins, while boiling add pepper and allspice to taste, tied in a bag, when cool add fresh vinegar, if needed, as without it may be too bitter to bottle; put two or three cloves of garlic to each bottle and cork tightly. It keeps for years-virtue increasing with age; this is unrivalled. Taken as a medicine for cough, it is most excellent; dose, a teaspoon three times a day.
Four preserving receipes from the same section, all of them written for open-kettle canning: hot food poured into jars and sealed with no further processing. That method is why none of these can be followed as printed, and the notes below explain where each one breaks down.
- Open-kettle sealing is the core problemEvery one of these four directs you to pour hot syrup over fruit, seal or "tie covers on jars," and stop. No processing time, no water-bath, no measured headspace, no temperature. Mould and yeast contamination of the jar rim and the underside of the lid is the routine failure. Use a current tested recipe for any of these fruits.
- Green tomato preserves are the least safe of the fourGreen tomato preserves are the one to treat most carefully -- Green tomatoes sit near the borderline of the acidity range used for safe canning, and the only added acid here is the juice of four lemons across eight pounds of fruit, an unmeasured amount. The very heavy sugar does inhibit spoilage, but it is not a substitute for a tested process.
- The brandy quantity cannot be rightA pint of brandy per pound of fruit would be roughly two quarts for a four-pound batch, more liquid than syrup and fruit combined. Treat the figure with suspicion rather than scaling it up; it may be a printing error.
- "Hot soda-water" is washing soda"Hot soda-water" is most likely washing soda -- Not carbonated water: probably a weak solution of sodium carbonate (sal soda), used hot to loosen peach fuzz so it could be rubbed off with a coarse cloth, though period receipes sometimes mean bicarbonate of soda by "soda". It is mildly caustic and will roughen your hands. The boiling-water dip described in the pickled peach receipe does the same job.
- A quarter peck of green walnutsA peck is eight dry quarts, so this is about two quarts of immature nuts, picked while the shell is still soft enough for a pin to pass through, some weeks before hulling stage. They stain hands, cloth and wood a permanent brown; wear gloves. Green walnuts are also seasonal and essentially unavailable commercially.
- The medicinal claimThe closing note recommending a teaspoon of walnut catsup three times a day for cough belongs to the period, when kitchen and medicine chest overlapped in print. It is not a dosage and should not be read as one.
- "Stew jar" and "stone jar""Stew jar" -- An earthenware crock, used for the twenty-four-hour vinegar steep. Do not substitute bare metal -- the vinegar will pit aluminium and pick up a metallic taste from iron. Glass or a food-grade plastic tub is the modern equivalent.
- Clarifying with egg whiteBeaten white is stirred into the cold liquid before heating; as it coagulates it traps sediment and is skimmed off. The technique is sound and still used in consommé, but it does nothing for preservation.
This page sits in the part of The Dixie Cook Book where preserving was still the household's main defence against the seasons, and each receipe carries a contributor's name and town — Mrs. Judge W. Jones of St. Joe, Missouri; L. A. Clarkson of Atlanta. "M. Harland" is Marion Harland, the pen name of Mary Virginia Terhune, one of the best-known domestic writers of the century. The pickled peaches are labelled "a German style," a nod to the sweet-sour fruit pickles that German-speaking settlers brought to American tables and that became fixtures beside roast meat. Walnut catsup belongs to a much older English tradition in which "catsup" meant any thin, dark, long-keeping savoury sauce — mushroom, oyster, anchovy or walnut — bottled in autumn and used the way we now use Worcestershire; tomato was the latecomer that eventually took the name for itself.