Dishes & Beverages of the Old South

by Martha McCulloch-Williams

When it over-ran with cups, somebody slimmer and suppler, took it away, and spread the cut fruit, just touching, all over the hot kiln. It must not be too hot—just so you couldn't bear the back of your hand to it was about right. Daddy kept the temperature even, by thrusting into the flues underneath it, long sticks of green wood, kindled well at the flue-mouths. Cups shrank mightily in a little while—you could push of an early trayful till it would no more than cover space the size of a big dish, long before dinner time—in other words twelve o'clock—drying was in full blast by seven. With fruit in gluts, and dropping fast, the kiln was supplemented by scaffolds. Clean planks laid upon trestles, and set in full sunshine, gave excellent accounts of themselves. This of course if the sun shone steadily—in showery weather scaffold-drying was no end of trouble. Weather permitting, it made—it still makes—the finest and most flavorous dried fruit ever eaten.

The black people chose clear-seed peaches for their individual drying. They made merry over splitting the fruit, and placing it, sitting out in front of their cabins in the moonshine, or by torch-light. Washing was all they gave the peach outsides—a little thing like a fuzzy rind their palates did not object to. It was just as well, since clear-seed fruit, peeled, shrinks unconscionably—to small scrawny knots, inclined to be sticky—though it is but just to add, that in cooking, it comes back to almost its original succulence. When the peach-cutting was done, there was commonly a watermelon feast. Especially at Mammy's house—Daddy's watermelons were famed throughout the county. He gave seed of them sparingly, and if the truth must be told, rather grudgingly—but nobody ever brought melons to quite his pitch of perfection. Possibly because he planted for the most part, beside rotting stumps in the new ground, where the earth had to be kept light and clean for tobacco, and where the vines got somewhat of shade, and the roots fed fat upon the richness of virgin soil.

It took eight bushels of ripe fruit, to make one of dry—this when the peaches were big and fleshy. Small, seedy sorts demanded ten bushels for one. Unpeeled, the ratio fell to seven for one. But there was seldom any lack of fruit—beside the orchard, there were trees up and down all the static fence rows—the corner of a worm fence furnishing an ideal seat. Further, every field boasted trees, self-planted, sprung from chance seed vagrantly cast. These volunteer trees often had the very best fruit—perhaps because only peaches of superior excellence had been worth carrying a-field. Tilth also helped—the field trees bent and often broke under their fruity burdens. It was only when late frosts made half or three parts of the young fruit drop, that we knew how fine and beautiful these field peaches could be. Our trees, being all seedlings, were in a degree, immortelles. Branches, even trunks might bend and break, but the seminal roots sent up new shoots next season, which in another year, bore fruit scantily. Still, these renewals never gave quite such perfect fruit as grew upon vigorous young trees, just come to full bearing.

Here or there a plantation owner like my starch and stately grandfather, turned surplus peaches into brandy. In that happy time excise was—only a word in the dictionary, so the yield of certain trees, very free-bearing, of small, deep, red, clear-seed fruit, was allowed to get dead-ripe on the trees, then mashed to a pulp in the cider trough, and put into stands to ferment, then duly distilled. Barrelled, after two years in the lumber house, it was racked into clean barrels, and some part of it converted into "peach and honey," the favorite gentleman's tipple. Strained honey was mixed with the brandy in varying proportions—the amount depending somewhat upon individual tastes. Some used one measure of honey to three of brandy, others put one to two, still others, half and half, qualifying the sweetness by adding neat brandy at the time of drinking. Peach and honey was kept properly in stone jugs or in demijohns, improved mightily with age, and was, at its best, to the last degree insidious. Newly mixed it was heady, but after a year or more, as smooth as oil, and as mellow. The honey had something to do with final excellence. That which the bees gathered from wild raspberries in flower, being very clear, light-colored and fine-flavored, was in especial request.

I think these peaches of the brandy orchards traced back to those the Indians, Creeks, Choctaws, and Cherokees, planted in the mountain valleys of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. They got the seed from early Spaniard voyagers to Florida. There was indeed a special Indian peach, as dark-skinned as its namesake, blood-red inside and out, very sweet and full of juice, if permitted to ripen fully—but as ill-tasting almost as a green persimmon, if unripe. There were clearstone and clingstone sorts, and one tree differed from another in glory of flavor, even as one star. That was the charm of our seedlings—which had further a distinction of flavor no commercial fruit ever yet owned.

August peaches were for drying—in September, early, came the Heaths, for preserves, brandy fruit, and so on. October peaches, nearly all clear-seed, made the finest peach butter. Understand, in those days, canning, known as "hermetic sealing," was still a laboratory process. I wonder if anybody else recalls, as I do, the first editions of fruit cans? They were of tin, tall and straight, with a flaring upstanding tin ruffle around the tops. The ruffle was for holding the sealing wax, into which the edge of the tin top was thrust. They did not last long—pretty soon, there were cans of the present shape—but sealing them with wax was hard work, likewise uncertain. Women everywhere should rise and call blessed he who invented the self-sealing jar.

Return we to our peach butter. It began in cider—the cider from fall apples, very rich and sweet. To boil it down properly required a battery of brass kettles swung over a log fire in the yard, the same as at drying up lard time. Naturally brass kettles were at a premium—but luckily everybody did not make peach butter, so it was no strain upon neighborly comity to borrow of such. It took more than half a day to boil down the cider properly—kettles were filled up constantly as there was room. By and by, when the contents became almost syrup, peaches went in—preferably the late, soft, white ones, dead ripe, very juicy, and nearly as sweet as sugar. After the kettles were full of them, peeled and halved, of course, the boiling went on until the fruit was mushy. Constant stirring helped to make it so. Fresh peaches were added twice, and cooked down until the paddle stood upright in the middle of the kettle. Then came the spicing—putting in cloves, mace, bruised ginger, and alspice—sparingly, but enough to flavor delicately. If the white peaches ran short, there might be a supplemental butter-making when the Red Octobers came in, at the very last of the month. They were big and handsome, oval, with the richest crimson cheeks, but nothing like so sweet as the white ones. So sugar, or honey, was added scantly, at the end of the boiling down. If it had been put in earlier, it would have added to the danger of burning.

A six-gallon crock of peach butter was no mean household asset—indeed it ranked next to the crock of blackberry jam. It was good as a sauce, or lightly sweetened, to spread on crust. As a filling for roly-polys it had but one superior—namely dried peaches properly stewed.

Proper stewing meant washing a quart of dry fruit in two waters, soaking overnight, then putting over the fire in the soaking water, covering with a plate to hold the fruit down, and simmering at the least five hours, filling up the kettle from time to time, and adding after the fruit was soft a pound of sugar. Then at the very last spices to taste went in. If the fruit were to be eaten along with meat, as a relish, a cupful of vinegar was added after the sugar. This made it a near approach to the finest sweet pickle. But as Mammy said often: "Dried peaches wus good ernough fer anybody—dest by dee sefs, dry so."

Apple drying commonly came a little before peach. Horse apples, the best and plentiest, ripened in the beginning of August. They were kiln-dried, or scaffold-dried, and much less tedious than peaches since they were sliced thin. When they got very mellow, drying ceased—commonly everybody had plenty by that time—and the making of apple butter began. It differed little from peach butter in the making, though mightily in taste—being of a less piquant flavor. Cider, newly run was essential to any sort of butter—hence the beating was done before breakfast. Cider mills were not—but cider troughs abounded. They were dug from huge poplar logs, squared outside with the broad axe, and adzed within to a smooth finish. Apples well washed, were beaten in them with round headed wooden pestles, and pressed in slat presses, the pomace laid on clean straw, after the manner of cider pressing in English orchards. The first runnings, somewhat muddy, were best for boiling down, but the clear last runnings drank divinely—especially after keeping until there was just the trace of sparkle to them.