Melange
A combination of fruits and their delightful commingling of flavors, results in a truly delicious conserve. It is easily made, requires no cooking; keeps for years, and can be served with the meat course, and with ice cream.
Begin in June with strawberries, the first fruit of the season, adding of each successive kind as they appear in market, using only the choicest of each. Procure a perfectly new three-gallon stone jar. Stem clean and weigh two pounds of large, fresh and ripe strawberries, weigh an equal quantity of best granulated sugar and place all together in the stone jar. Cover with one pint of pure brandy. Cover the jar with a cloth, tie up securely and place in the cellar or in a cool place. Look after it for several mornings, stirring well the mixture with a wooden spoon until the sugar is all dissolved. Next add a pineapple prepared in small pieces, with a silver fork. Add the weight of the pineapple in sugar and thus continue with each successive fruit, not forgetting to stir each morning for several consecutive days after adding the fruit, to more thoroughly dissolve the sugar. The stirring must be done carefully so as not to mash the fruit. Cherries, black, red and white can be added, but must first be pitted. Raspberries give an especially delightful fragrance, and three pints are not too many for this quantity. Get as solid ones as possible and the red, black and yellow can all be used to give variety in color. When the jar is about one-third filled, diminish the quantity of sugar, and use from then on, only three-quarters of a pound of sugar to each pound of fruit. Apricots should be pared, seeded and halved, and peaches must be prepared in the same way. Pears should be pared, quartered and cored. Grapes, malagas excepted, are too full of seeds to be desirable. Plums of all kinds, green, purple and red, give variety in coloring and add much to the flavor. In fact, plums and peaches are especially desirable, as too large a preponderance of the smaller fruits detract from the appearance. Plums must be stoned and the larger varieties can be halved. In the fall, after the jar is filled, let all stand together for several weeks. Then fill into glass jars, adding as much liquid as desirable with the fruit, and seal without heating. There will be quite a little surplus juice, which can be canned by itself and labeled and utilized in various ways. Boiled down to a jelly-like consistency, is nice with bread and butter as a sweet sandwich.