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Pickled Apples
Mrs. Watson.
For one peck of sweet apples take three pounds of sugar, two quarts of vinegar, one-half ounce of cinnamon, onehalf ounce cloves; pare the apples, leaving them whole; boil them in part of the vinegar and sugar until you can put a fork through them; take them out; heat the remainder of the vinegar and sugar and pour over them. Be careful not to boil them too long or they will break. SPICED CURRANTS TO BE EATEN WITH MEATS.
Mrs. Carson.
Four quarts currants, one pint of vinegar, three pounds sugar, one tablespoon cinnamon, one allspice, one of cloves, one of nutmeg; cook one hour; keep in a cool place, tightly covered.
Two sweet-sour fruit pickles from the same page, both meant as relishes for cold or roast meat. The measurements are period-standard but the vessel sizes and spice weights need translating.
- A peck of applesA peck is eight dry quarts, roughly 10-12 lb of whole apples, which is a very large batch. Quartering the recipe (about 3 lb apples, 12 oz sugar, 2 cups vinegar) gives a manageable quantity without changing the balance.
- "Sweet apples"This means a low-acid eating apple, not a cooking apple. Firm, dense varieties hold their shape; anything that turns to sauce quickly will break apart exactly as Mrs. Watson warns.
- Half an ounce of spiceHalf an ounce of whole cinnamon bark or whole cloves is roughly 2 to 3 tablespoons. Use whole spices tied in a muslin bag rather than ground, or the syrup will be gritty and muddy.
- Vinegar strengthNineteenth-century household vinegar varied widely. Use a standard 5% cider vinegar; a mild, low-acid salad vinegar will not preserve properly.
- The hinge: stop earlyThe apples should be lifted out the moment a fork slides in with slight resistance, not when they are soft. They continue cooking in the hot syrup poured over them, and a minute too long turns whole pared apples into pulp.
- Reducing the second syrupThe remaining vinegar and sugar is heated and poured over hot. Boiling it a few minutes first will thicken it slightly; the fruit may be better after two or three days in the syrup.
- Currants means fresh currantsMrs. Carson's four quarts are fresh red or black Ribes currants, not the dried Zante currants sold in baking aisles. Four quarts is about 5 lb of fruit.
- "One allspice"The tablespoon carries over from the preceding item: one tablespoon each of allspice, cloves and nutmeg. An hour of cooking with that much spice and 3 lb of sugar produces a thick, jam-like conserve rather than a loose pickle.
- Storage"A cool place, tightly covered" meant an unheated cellar. Both preparations are high in acid and sugar, but the original gives no processing instruction, so treat them as refrigerator preserves or follow a current tested water-bath canning process for pickled fruit.
The Home Cook Book belongs to the first wave of North American charity compilations, in which each contribution is signed with the name of the woman who supplied it. Sweet pickled fruit of this kind, apples, peaches, pears, crab apples, was a fixture of the Victorian meat table: sugar and vinegar in near-equal weight produced a sharp, spiced accompaniment that did the work a fresh salad or chutney does now, at a season when neither was available. The currants are a reminder of how much the domestic fruit garden has shifted. Fresh Ribes currants were a common backyard crop in the nineteenth century; cultivation was later restricted in much of the United States because the bushes host white pine blister rust, and the fruit has never fully returned to general sale there. Both recipes also show the era's habit of pairing cloves, cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg in the same jar, each specified by its own weight or spoon measure.