The small myrtle of the South, makes a very fine green sweetmeat. Lay them three days in weak salt and water. Then three days in cold water, changed at least three times a day. Afterwards, put a layer of green vine-leaves at the bottom of the preserving kettle, and round the sides. Put in a layer of oranges, sprinkling among them a very little powdered alum, allowing not more than a heaped salt-spoonful of alum to the whole kettle of oranges and vine-leaves. Then fill up with water; hang them over the fire till they are of a fine green, and boil them till they are so tender that you can pierce them through with a twig from a whisk broom. When clear and crisp, take them out of the kettle, spread them on flat dishes, and throw away the vine-leaves. Then wash out the kettle, and, having weighed the oranges, allow to each pound one pound of double-refined sugar, broken small. Put the sugar into the preserving-kettle, and pour on half a pint of water to each pound of sugar. When it is quite dissolved, hang it over the fire, and boil and skim it till it is very clear, and no more scum appears on the surface. Then put in the oranges, and boil them slowly in the syrup till they slightly burst.
Another way is to scoop out all the inside of oranges as soon as they are greened, and make a thick jelly of it, with the addition of some more orange-pulp from other oranges. Press it through a strainer, and, after adding a pound of sugar to each pint of orange juice, boil it to a jelly. Having boiled the empty oranges in a syrup till they are crisp and tender, spread them out to cool—fill them with the jelly, and put them up in glass jars, pouring the syrup over them.
TO KEEP STRAWBERRIES.—
Take the largest and finest ripe strawberries, hull them, and put them immediately into large wide-mouthed bottles, filling them quite up to the top. Cork them directly, and be sure to wire the corks. Set the bottles into a large preserving-kettle full of cold water. Place them over the fire, and let the water boil around them for a quarter of an hour after it has come to a boil. Then take out the bottles, drain them, and wipe the outside dry. Proceed at once to seal the corks hermetically, with the red cement made of one-third bees-wax cut up, and two-thirds rosin, melted together in a skillet over the fire, and, when completely liquid, taken off the fire, and thickened to the consistence of sealing-wax by stirring in sufficient finely powdered brick-dust. This cement must be spread on hot over the wired corks. It is excellent for all sweetmeat and pickle jars. Nothing is better. Keep the bottles in boxes of dry sand. When opened, the strawberries will be found fresh and highly flavoured, as when just gathered. They must, however, be used as soon as they are opened, for exposure to the air will spoil them.
Raspberries, ripe currants stripped from the stalk, ripe gooseberries topped and tailed, and any small fruit, may be kept in this manner for many months.
In France, where syrups of every sort of fruit are made by boiling the juice with sugar, and then bottling it, it is very customary to serve up, in glass dishes, fruits preserved as above, with their respective syrups poured round them, from the bottles. They are delicious.
TO KEEP PEACHES.—
Take fine ripe juicy free-stone peaches. Pare them, and remove the stones by thrusting them out with a skewer, leaving the peaches as nearly whole as possible. Or you may cut them in half. Put them immediately into flat stone jars, and cement on the covers with the composition of bees-wax and rosin melted together, and thickened with powdered brick dust. The jars (filled up to the top) must be so closely covered that no air can possibly get to the peaches. Then pack the jars in boxes of sand, or of powdered charcoal, and nail on the box-lid.
Peaches done in this manner, have arrived at California in perfect preservation. But they must be eaten as soon as the jars are opened.