Skip to main content
Dessert

Canning, Preserving, Pickung

Section on preserving fruit with recipes for canned plums, pears, and berries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Ithaca (N.Y.) First Baptist Church. Ladies Union · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Canning, Preserving, Pickung

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash plums and pierce skins with a silver fork.

  2. Pack plums in jars, set in steamer (or in wash boiler, surrounding cans with cold water), and cook until tender.

  3. Remove jars and pour off juice.

  4. Keep three or four vessels going, containing not more than two or three cups of juice before the sugar is added.

  5. Do not attempt to boil too large a quantity of the juice at one time when making jelly.

Pack and seal

  1. Fill up jars, using some of jars already cooked or having cooked fruit ready in stew-pan.

  2. Have ready a rather heavy syrup boiling hot, pour over cooked fruit and seal.

  3. Then strain the poured off juice and make into jelly the usual way.

Make the pickle

  1. Dissolve sugar in water, add lemons, then ginger broken in bits, then pears cut into dice.

  2. Cook until a rich red.

  3. Seal in glass jars or put into jelly glassy and seal with paraffin.

Make the berry preserve

  1. To 7 pounds of berries add 3 pounds light brown sugar and 1 teacup of vinegar.

  2. Boil down to proper thickness (3 hours).

  3. Put in crock and on top of berries put a brown paper, tight, wet well with vinegar.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

66Calories
0 gProtein
0 gFat
17 gCarbs

Counts 4 of 5 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Vinegar1 tbsp (15ml) distilled3
Ginger1 tsp grated fresh (2g)2
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Ithaca (N.Y.) First Baptist Church. Ladies Union. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Vinegar + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,126 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, when boiled down, thickens it into a syrup or jelly.
Lemons
Add acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness of the sugar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps preserve the berries and sharpens the flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the juice in small batches. Boiling too large a quantity of juice at once slows evaporation, so the jelly takes longer to reach set and can overcook, losing colour and flavour.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, ginger):

  1. Cherryfits about as well
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Apricotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, ginger. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes