Pick over your barberries, and put them in clarified syrup, boil them half an hour. Molasses does very well to preserve barberries in, for common use, with a little orange peel boiled with them. Preserved barberries mixed with water, is a very refreshing drink in fevers.
[240.] To Preserve Ginger.
Take green ginger, and soak it until you can scrape off the outside, when scraped, soak it in salt and water one day, then take it out of the salt and water, and boil it till tender. Make a syrup of white sugar, allowing equal weights of sugar and ginger, when clarified take it off, and when cold, turn it on the ginger, let it remain a week, then boil the ginger and syrup together, until the syrup appears to have entered the ginger, when cool put in a little essence of lemon.
[241.] To Preserve Apples.
Take nice tart apples, halve and quarter them, and take out the cores. For a pound of apples, allow three quarters of a pound of sugar. When you have clarified your syrup, put in the apples, with the skin of a lemon pared thin. When the apples are tender, take them up, and let the syrup remain till cold, then turn it over them. Apples preserved in this manner, will keep but a few days. Crab apples should be preserved whole, with the skins on, and to a pound of the apples put a pound of sugar.
[242.] To Preserve Cymbelines or Mock Citron.
Cut and scrape the rinds of cymbelines, put them in strong salt and water, let them remain in it a week, then in fair water three days, changing the water every day, then soak them in alum water an hour. Tie up oyster shells, in a cloth, and boil them with the cymbelines. When the cymbelines are tender, take them up and put them in alum water. Make your syrup, allowing a pound and a half of sugar, to a pound of the melon, boil your cymbelines in it three quarters of an hour. These are good eaten as any other preserves, or put in cake instead of citron.