Skip to main content
Preserve

Other Methods of Canning

A collection of home canning methods for preserving fruit, including oven canning, boiling fruit in jars, steaming, and canning without heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Chapel, Inie Gage, Mrs. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Other Methods of Canning

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cans and syrup

  1. Have your cans sterilized in boiling water as usual.

  2. Pack the raw fruit, cut or whole, as compactly as possible without crushing it, in the cans up to the first rim.

  3. Make syrup of 1/2 pound (1 cup) of sugar to 1 pint (1 1/2 cups) of water, or 5 quarts of water to 6 pounds of sugar, or for very sour fruits use 1/2 pound of sugar to a pint of water, or 6 quarts of water to 9 pounds of sugar to a dozen quart jars.

  4. Let the syrup come to a simmer and be ready when the cans are packed.

Set up the oven bath

  1. Fill the packed jars with hot syrup to one inch below the top.

  2. Place the cans in racks in the dripping pan, or if you have no racks fold cloth below them, not allowing cans to touch each other, and pour hot water in the dripping pan so it will be about one inch deep around the cans.

  3. Set the pan in the oven.

  4. Cover the cans with small tin covers or a large piece of tin weighted down, or a piece of sheet iron, but not the can covers, as it may burn and spoil them.

Bake and seal

  1. If the oven is moderately hot, almost close the door. If hotter it takes less time; in 15 to 30 minutes the fruit will be done, but in any case leave the fruit in until the syrup in the jars beads on top.

  2. Take out the pan with jars from the oven.

  3. Have ready more of the syrup added before, boiling hot, and fill each can to overflowing with it.

  4. Put on sterilized rubber and screw down sterilized top (just out of boiling water). Test for leaks and put away as usual.

Other methods

  1. Make a syrup of two pints of sugar to one of water, pare and halve the fruit, rinse in cold water and pack in jars.

  2. Fill the jar with hot syrup until brimful.

  3. Place jars in a wash boiler of tepid water, bring the water gradually to a boil and boil from 10 to 20 minutes.

  4. Take any kind of fruit and fill jars, such as plums, prunes, peaches, pears, etc.

  5. Fill jars with syrup one inch from top. Make the syrup out of water with 1 cup of sugar for a quart can of fruit.

  6. Put in steamer and steam for 15 minutes.

  7. Take out and fill cans with boiling water if not full and seal tight.

By Chapel, Inie Gage, Mrs. [from old catalog]. 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

What each ingredient does

Fruit
The food being preserved; heat softens it while it cooks gently in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and forms the syrup that fills the jars, balancing tart fruit.

The step that matters

Fill the jars to overflowing with boiling syrup before sealing. Hot syrup drives air out of the jars as they cool. Less trapped air leaves less room for spoilage and helps the lids form a tight vacuum seal.

“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

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes