On Preserving Fruits in Bottles
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the bottles
Envelop each bottle of fruit in a coarse bag.
Make the wax
Melt bottle-wax in an earthen pot, adding 1 ounce of bees-wax for every pound of bottle-wax.
Stir well, then dip the nozzles of the bottles into the melted wax after it cools slightly.
Seal and scald
Turn the bottle to coat the cork evenly with wax.
Place the bottles upright in a large pot or copper, and pour in cold water to reach halfway up the bottles.
Cover the bottles with a wet cloth and put the lid on the pot.
Apply heat to scald the fruit.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Bottle-wax
- Forms a sealed coating over the bottle corks, keeping air out.
- Bees-wax
- Stiffens the wax so the seal sets firm and hard.
- Bottles of fruit
- The food being preserved inside the sealed bottles.
The step that matters
Dipping the nozzles after the wax cools slightly. If the wax is too hot it runs off the cork and leaves thin spots, while wax that is too cool clumps and does not bond evenly. Slight cooling lets it coat the cork in an even layer that seals well.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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