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Sweet Pickled Peaches
To seven pounds of peaches allow three and threequarter pounds of sugar, one quart of vinegar of medium strength, two ounces of cloves and two ounces of stick cinnamon. Pare the peaches and stick one clove in each one. Boil the sugar and vinegar with several sticks of cinnamon, for seven minutes, then put in the peaches. When cooked until thoroughly done, take them out. Boil the syrup, reducing it to nearly half and pour it over the peaches. Put in glass fruit jars and seal. Spiced fruits are made in the same way.
A straightforward high-acid sweet pickle, but two things in the original will trip up a modern cook: the vagueness of "cooked until thoroughly done" and the assumption that hot jars sealed straight from the kettle will keep.
- The hinge: do not overcook the fruitPeaches collapse quickly in hot syrup. "Thoroughly done" here means no more than just tender to a skewer, likely only a few minutes for firm fruit, not a long simmer. Use slightly underripe freestone peaches, which are easier to pit cleanly than clingstones.
- Sealing and storageFilling jars with hot syrup and screwing on the lid is open-kettle canning, once ordinary practice and no longer recommended even for acid pickles, because the seal is unreliable and surface mould and yeast can take hold. Follow the processing time from a current tested sweet-pickle recipe, or simply keep the finished jars in the refrigerator and use them within a few weeks.
- "Vinegar of medium strength"The phrase implies a scale of strengths: ordinary household cider or white vinegar as against stronger vinegar sold for pickling. The exact strengths intended are not recorded. Modern bottled vinegar at 5 percent acidity is a reasonable substitute; do not dilute it.
- Weights in cupsThree and three-quarter pounds of sugar is about 8 1/2 cups granulated. Seven pounds of peaches is roughly 20 to 24 medium fruit, which yields something under 6 pounds once pared and pitted.
- Two ounces each of cloves and cinnamonThat is a large amount by volume, roughly half a cup of whole cloves and a good many cinnamon sticks. Only a couple of dozen cloves go into studding the fruit; the rest, with the cinnamon, goes in the syrup. Tie the loose spice in cheesecloth so it can be lifted out before the syrup is reduced.
- ParingSkip the paring knife. Thirty seconds in boiling water and a plunge into ice water slips the skins off cleanly and costs no flesh.
- Reducing the syrupAfter the fruit is lifted out, boiling the syrup to nearly half takes a good 15 to 20 minutes in a wide pan. The syrup thickens further as it cools, so stop while it still pours freely.
- Yield and servingExpect about 4 to 5 pints. Sweet pickled peaches were a relish rather than a dessert, served cold alongside ham, roast pork, cold beef or poultry.
Sweet and spiced pickles occupy their own chapter in many American cookbooks of this period because vinegar, sugar and whole spice were the cheapest reliable way to hold summer fruit through winter, and because a pickled fruit was expected on the table with cold or roasted meat much as chutney or cranberry sauce is now. The technique is inherited from English and northern European sweet-sour preserving, and putting up fruit at home became practical for ordinary households once cheap glass jars and screw-top lids were available. The closing line, "Spiced fruits are made in the same way," is characteristic of the genre: the same syrup was applied to pears, crab apples, plums and green tomatoes, so a book could give one formula and leave the substitutions to the cook. Studding each peach with a single clove is a small piece of older kitchen craft, keeping the spice evenly distributed and easy to see and avoid on the plate.