Dried Fruits

Take fresh-gathered peaches; cut out the kernels; put them on a tin in the oven just as the bread comes out; when about half-done take them out, flatten them, and replace them till done sufficiently. Plums may be done in the same way, choosing those that fall from the trees. Apricots the same as peaches. Pears should be peeled, taking care to leave on the stalks; then put them with the peel in a large pan full of water, boil them till they begin to soften, and then dry in the oven as the others.

How To Preserve Currants And Gooseberries

Have ready some perfectly dry clean bottles; cut the currants from the larger stalks, and drop them gently into the bottle; to each bottle allow a quarter of a pound of pounded sugar; tie bladder over the bottles; set them in a saucepan up to the neck in water, and let them boil half an hour, and remain in the water all night. Gooseberries the same: keep them in a cool place. Almost all fruit and young peas may be preserved in the same way. The bottles are better if kept in sand with the cork downwards: they should be carefully corked and rosined.

How To Preserve Plums For Tarts

Put the plums into a narrow-mouthed stone jar, and to every twelve pounds of plums allow seven pounds of raw sugar; strew it among the plums as you put them in the jar; tie up the mouth of the jar with several folds of paper, put them in a cool oven, and let them stand till the sugar has thoroughly penetrated the fruit, when they will be done enough, and the bottles must be corked close, and tied over with bladder.

How To Imitate Ginger

When white cos lettuce is beginning to run to seed cut off the stalks, and peel all the stringy part off them till only the heart is left; then cut in pieces about the size West India ginger usually is, and throw the pieces into water as you cut them; wash it well; have ready some sugar and water, in the proportion of a pound of sugar to five pints of water; add a large spoonful of pounded ginger, and boil the whole together for twenty minutes; let it stand two days and boil again for half an hour; repeat this five or six times, always leaving it in the same syrup, then drain it on a sieve and wipe it with a cloth. Prepare a fresh syrup, with as much raw ginger in it as will make it taste quite hot; boil the mock ginger in this two or three times, till it looks quite clear and tastes as hot as India ginger; put it then in pots; when it is cold tie it close down. If this is done with care it is difficult to detect the mock from the real ginger.

Apple Ginger

Pare and cut twelve pounds of apples in round pieces; add to them eight pounds of fine-sifted white sugar and four ounces of pounded ginger; let them stand forty-eight hours; then put all into a preserving-pan, and boil till the apples look clear; pot them, and tie bladder over the top of the pots. It is better if the ginger is only bruised and put into a muslin bag, to be afterwards taken out; but you must then use nearly double the quantity of ginger.