How To Preserve Apples

Weigh equal quantities of Newtown pippins, and the best of sugar; allow one sliced lemon for every pound. Make a syrup, and then put in the apples. Boil them until they are tender; then lay them into the jars and boil the syrup until it will become a jelly. No other apple can be preserved without breaking. This keeps its shape, and is very beautiful. Quarter the apples, or take out the core and leave them whole, as you prefer. Other sour hard apples are very good preserved, but none keep as well, or are as handsome as the Newtown pippins.

How To Preserve Crab Apples

Weigh them, and put them into water enough to almost, but not quite, cover them. Take them out when they have boiled till a little tender, and put into the water as many pounds of sugar as you have of fruit, and boil it till clear, then set it aside till it is cold; skim it, and return the fruit to the kettle, and put it again on the fire. The moment it actually boils take it off; lay the fruit into the jar with care, so as not to break it.

How To Preserve Pine-Apples

Take equal quantities of pine-apple and the best of loaf sugar. Slice the pine-apple, put nearly or all the sugar over it. Put it in a deep pan, and let it stand. all night. In the morning take the apple out and boil the syrup. When it begins to simmer, put the apple in and boil fifteen or twenty minutes. Tie a piece of white ginger in a bit of muslin, and boil it in the syrup before adding the apple. After boiling the whole ten or fifteen minutes, take out the apple and boil the syrup ten minutes longer; then pour it over the pine-apple. The apples should be ripe, and yet perfectly sound. If the syrup does not taste enough of ginger, boil it with the ginger till it suits the taste.

How To Preserve Pine-Apples (Without Boiling)

Select large, fresh pine-apples. Pare them with a very sharp knife, having a thin blade. Carefully remove the little prickly eyes. Slice the fruit round and round about half an inch thick. Weigh a pound and a quarter of best granulated sugar, to a pound of fruit; and put into a glass jar a layer of sugar, and then a layer of fruit till it is filled. Make the layers of sugar very thick, else you will have a quantity left when the fruit is all laid in. Cover the jar close, and set it in a very cold place. This will keep perfectly, and have the taste of freshly sugared pine-apples a year afterward.

How To Preserve Blackberries

To a pound of the low, running blackberries, allow a pound of fine sugar. Put them together in the preserving kettle, the fruit first, and the sugar on the top. These berries are so juicy that no water will be necessary; but they must begin very slowly to stew, and boil gently an hour. If blackberries are well done at first, they will not need scalding afterwards.

The high blackberries are not good preserved, but make an excellent syrup for medicinal purposes.

How To Preserve Currants

Weigh equal quantities of sugar, and fruit stripped from the stems. Boil the fruit ten minutes, stirring it often, and crushing it. Add the sugar, and boil another ten minutes. Measure the time from the minute boiling commences. This keeps till currants come again. Clean brown sugar does very well. If it is to be used up in the course of the autumn, ten or twelve ounces of sugar to a pound of fruit is enough.

Cranberry Sauce

Pour very hot water upon the fruit, as it will thus be easy to pick out the bad ones. Measure them, and put them into the preserving-kettle with water enough nearly to cover them. Stir them very often; see that they do not boil too fast. Crush the fruit as it boils with a wooden ladle or spoon. When the berries are crushed, add a pint of fine sugar for every quart of berries, and allow them to boil gently fifteen minutes, stirring them almost all the time. Wet in cold water moulds or bowls of a size to hold sauce enough for use at one dinner.

Cranberries keep very well in a firkin of water in the cellar, and if so kept, can be stewed fresh at any time during the winter.

How To Preserve Damsons

Wash, drain, and weigh them, put them into the kettle, and add the same weight of sugar and (to six or eight pounds) a pint of water. Boil them gently but steadily an hour; press the top ones down carefully, several times. They will break some, and the pricking each one with a needle before stewing them, makes little, if any difference. But they break less than other small plums, and are more solid. The syrup gives an elegant color to a beaten white of egg, for ornamenting custards or delicate puddings.

Other small sized blue plums are preserved in the same way.

How To Preserve Egg Plums

To make the most elegant of all plum sweetmeats, take the Duane, or the Egg plums, ripe, but not very ripe. The skin can usually be pulled off. If you cannot remove it without tearing the fruit, pour on boiling water, and instantly pour it off, or lay them into a cullender, and dip boiling water over them once. Allow equal quantities of fruit and sugar, and make the syrup in the usual way. Then lay in a few plums at a time, and boil gently five minutes; lay them into a jar as you take them from the kettle, and when all are done, pour the boiling syrup over them. After two days, drain off the syrup, boil it, and pour it upon them again. Do this every two or three days till they look clear. Then, if you wish the syrup to be very thick, boil it half an hour, and when cold, pour it upon the plums.