Canned Pears
| Pears, | 1 dozen |
| Sugar | |
| Water |
Adelaide prepared a dozen large pears, although mother said eight were quite sufficient (if large) to fill a pint jar. It was not a good plan to crowd such fruit as peaches, pears, and apricots in too closely, because you might break the fruit.
With the little sharp knife Adelaide peeled the pears very thinly and cut them in halves, removing the cores. The stems she left on. After weighing the fruit, she placed it in the saucepan and measured one cup of water to each pound of fruit. If the pears were tart, she weighed one-half their weight of sugar; if they were sweet she weighed only one-third their weight of sugar.
The sugar was put in an earthenware dish at the back of the range to heat through, but not brown.
Placing the saucepan containing the pears and water over the fire, Adelaide let them come slowly to the boiling point. With the wooden spoon she stirred them frequently, being careful not to break the fruit. If, after twenty minutes of gentle boiling, the pears were easily pierced with a silver fork, Adelaide added the warm sugar gradually and stirred carefully and constantly until it boiled up again.
Into the sterilized pint jar Adelaide lifted each half pear with a silver fork, then poured in the juice until it overflowed. The inserting of a silver knife between the fruit and the jar, to let all the bubbles rise to the top and break, was the next thing to be done, after which she placed a new rubber smoothly on the jar, sealed it quickly, then stood the jar upside down out of the way of any draft.
In the morning Adelaide wiped off all stickiness from the jar with a damp cloth, and examined it carefully to be sure that it did not leak. Next she pasted on the labels and stored the fruit away in the preserve closet.
Mother told Adelaide that some people found pears a little too flat for their taste, and in that case a tablespoon of lemon juice was added with each dozen pears.