PRESERVED "GERMAN PRUNES" OR PLUMS
After washing fruit, piece each plum several times with a silver fork, if plums be preserved whole. This is not necessary if pits are removed. Weigh fruit and to each pound of plums take about ¾ pound of granulated sugar. Place alternate layers of plums and sugar in a preserving kettle, stand on the back of range three or four hours, until sugar has dissolved, then draw kettle containing sugar and plums to front of range and boil 20 minutes. Remove scum which arises on top of boiling syrup. Place plums in glass jars, pour boiling syrup over and seal.
A good rule is about four pounds of sugar to five pounds of plums.
Should plums cook soft in less than 20 minutes, take from syrup with a perforated skimmer, place in jars and cook syrup until as thick as honey; then pour over fruit and seal up jars.
A genuine old-fashioned recipe for apple butter, as "Aunt Sarah" made it at the farm. A large kettle holding about five gallons was filled with sweet cider. This cider was boiled down to half the quantity. The apple butter was cooked over a wood fire, out of doors. The cider was usually boiled down the day before making the apple butter, as the whole process was quite a lengthy one. Fill the kettle holding the cider with apples, which should have been pared and cored the night before at what country folks call an "apple bee," the neighbors assisting to expedite the work. The apples should be put on to cook as early in the morning as possible and cooked slowly over not too hot a fire, being stirred constantly with a long-handled "stirrer" with small perforated piece of wood on one end. There is great danger of the apple butter burning if not carefully watched and constantly stirred. An extra pot of boiling cider was kept near, to add to the apple butter as the cider boiled away. If cooked slowly, a whole day or longer will be consumed in cooking. When the apple butter had almost finished cooking, about the last hour, sweeten to taste with sugar (brown sugar was frequently used). Spices destroy the true apple flavor, although Aunt Sarah used sassafras root, dug from the near-by woods, for flavoring her apple butter, and it was unexcelled. The apple butter, when cooked sufficiently, should be a dark rich color, and thick like marmalade, and the cider should not separate from it when a small quantity is tested on a saucer. An old recipe at the farm called for 32 gallons of cider to 8 buckets of cider apples, and to 40 gallons of apple butter 50 pounds of sugar were used. Pour the apple butter in small crocks used for this purpose. Cover the top of crocks with paper, place in dry, cool store-room, and the apple butter will keep several years. In olden times sweet apples were used for apple butter, boiled in sweet cider, then no sugar was necessary. Small brown, earthen pots were used to keep this apple butter in, it being only necessary to tie paper over the top. Dozens of these pots, filled with apple butter, might have been seen in Aunt Sarah's store-room at the farm at one time.