PRESERVED GREEN TOMATAS.—
Take a peck of button tomatas, full grown, but quite green. Weigh them, and to each pound allow a pound of the best double-refined loaf-sugar, broken up small. Scald and peel them. Have ready ten lemons rolled under your hand on a table, to increase the juice. Grate off, upon lumps of sugar, the yellow surface of the rind, scraping up the grating or zest with a spoon, and transferring it to a bowl. Squeeze over it, through a strainer, the juice of the lemon. Take a quarter of a pound of root ginger, scrape off the outside, grate the ginger and mix it with the lemon.
Put the sugar into a large preserving kettle, and pour water on it; allowing half a pint of water to each pound of sugar. Stir it about with a large, clean wooden spoon, till it melts. Set it over a clear fire, and boil and skim it. After it has boiled, and is very clear, and the scum has ceased to rise, put in the tomatas and boil them till every one has slightly bursted. Next add the lemon and ginger, and boil them about a quarter of an hour longer. Then take them out and spread them on large dishes to cool. Boil the syrup by itself, ten minutes longer. Put the tomatas into jars, about half full, and fill up with the syrup. Cover the jars closely, and paste paper round the lids; or tie bladders over them.
Green tomatas, done as above, make an excellent sweetmeat. Ripe or red tomatas may be preserved in the same manner; yellow ones also.
The lemon and ginger must on no account be omitted.
PRESERVED FIGS.—
Take figs when perfectly ripe, and wipe them carefully, leaving the stem about half an inch long. Boil them rapidly, for about ten minutes, in water that has a small bag of hickory wood-ashes laid at the bottom of the preserving kettle. Then take them out carefully, so as not to break the skins. Wash out the kettle, and boil the figs a second time, in clean hot water, for ten minutes. Take them out, spread them separately on large dishes, and let them rest till next morning.
Prepare a syrup, by allowing to every pound of the finest loaf-sugar, half a pint of water, and, when melted together, placing the kettle over the fire. When the syrup has boiled, and is thoroughly skimmed, put in the figs, and boil them about twenty-five minutes or half an hour. Then take them out, and again spread them to cool on large dishes. Afterwards, put them up in glass jars, pouring the syrup over them. Cover the jars closely, and set them in the hot sun all next day. Then seal the corks with the red cement made of melted rosin and bees-wax, thickened with fine brick-dust.
Another way is to cut the stems closely, and to peel off the skin of the figs; and to substitute for the bag of wood-ashes, a little powdered alum. Then proceed as above.