Mushrooms.—(a) Pick and cut off the stalks, wipe them clean, from the large ones remove the brown part, peel off the skin, and lay them on paper in a cool oven. When dry put them into paper bags, and keep them in a dry place. When required for use, simmer them in gravy, and they will swell to their original size.
(b) Allow to each qt. of mushrooms 3 oz. butter, pepper and salt to taste, and the juice of 1 lemon. Peel the mushrooms, and put them into cold water, with a little lemon juice; take them out and dry them very carefully in a cloth. Put the butter into a stewpan capable of holding the mushrooms. When melted, add the mushrooms, lemon juice, pepper, and salt. Let them remain over a slow fire until their liquor is boiled away, and they have become quite dry. Be careful not to allow them to stick to the bottom of the pan. When done, put them into pots, and pour over the top clarified butter. If required for immediate use, they will keep good a few days without being covered over. To re-warm them, put the mushrooms into a stewpan, strain the butter from them, and they will be ready for use.
Peaches and Nectarines.—These, like the plums, vary in their keeping qualities; and certainly to be a good keeper is not the least merit a peach or nectarine can possess, for, owing to the crop frequently coming in suddenly during a spell of warm weather, the gardener is forced to gather large quantities of fruit, and keep it the best way he can. Every one does not possess an ice-house, otherwise most varieties keep on for ice 4-6 weeks; but they must be used as soon as taken out, and almost before they have cooled. In the fruit room, placed on a cool airy shelf, the Royal George peach, Belle-garde, Grosse Mignonne, Borrington, and Late Admiral will keep a fortnight or longer, according to the weather; and the Malta is said to keep even longer. But much depends, of course, how the fruit is gathered. Nectarines are better keepers than peaches, and the Victoria is one of the best. Most of the kinds will keep a fortnight at least without deteriorating in flavour if they are pulled at the right time, which is just before they are quite ripe to the base.
Pineapples.—By far the best keepers of these are the smooth Cayenne, Charlotte Rothschild, and Queen. The first two will keep 6 weeks after they are ripe if the plants are moved into a cool structure and kept dry at the root, but if they are cut off the plant they do not keep so long. Queens keep 4-5 weeks on the plants under the same conditions. Some recommend the fruit, whether cut or on the plants, to be removed before it gets quite ripe; but when good flavour is an object this practice is not advisable, as the fruit will keep nearly as well if it is allowed to get quite ripe before taking it out of the pinery.
Plums and Apricots.—Both plums and apricots are difficult to keep long, though some varieties keep much better than others, particularly of plums. Apricots perish on the tree if they are not gathered in time, generally rotting on the ripe side, particularly if the weather be wet, or if the fruit has been injured by wasps or other vermin. The only plan is to gather the fruit before it is quite ripe on the shady side, and lay it on a sieve in the fruit room, or in a cool cellar. In this way it will keep for a week perfectly perhaps, but scarcely longer.
Plums keep tolerably well, and some sorts, like that excellent variety, Coe’s Golden Drop, keep an astonishingly long period under certain favourable conditions. The best-preserved samples we ever saw of this variety were suspended to footstalks on lines stretched across a dry room; and if we remember rightly, they have been kept in that condition for 2 months. Some wrap the fruit in dry paper, and, if we are not mistaken, Reeves has somewhere stated that he has eaten them in good condition 12 months after they were gathered when preserved in that way. Considering what an excellent dessert variety Coe’s Golden Drop is, it is a wonder it has not long ago became the subject of special culture, under glass if necessary, just like the peach and nectarine—it is well worth a house to itself. Another excellent keeping plum of the same breed as Coe’s Golden Drop is the Ickworth Impératrice, which hangs on the tree till it shrivels, and keeps for a long while in the fruit room. Knight, who raised it, states in the Transactions of the Horticultural Society that he has kept fruit of it, wrapped in blotting-paper and kept in a dry room, till the end of March. Blue Impératrice is also said to be a good keeper; and the old damson, so useful for tarts and preserving, is not one of the worst, as it will keep for several weeks if the fruit is spread out thinly on the shelves as soon as gathered. None of the plums keep well after they have been basketed and stored, even for a short time. They get bruised, and, no matter how carefully they are kept afterwards, they soon rot. Everything depends on gathering them before they get dead ripe, and storing properly at once.
Roots.—The action of frost is not thoroughly understood by farmers generally. This is shown by the way clamps are covered with manure on the top and half-way down the sides. The singular fact, however, is, that the top of a clamp is never injured—that is, unless the frost is so severe and prolonged that the whole mass is frozen—if the clamp be fairly covered with straw and earth at starting. The severity of an attack of frost begins and continues from the outer soil at the base of a clamp or brick store, as a barn or other building. Whether this is because a gentle fermentation of the roots or potatoes goes on, the warmth thus caused rising to the top, or whether it is because the lowest temperature is nearest the immediate surface of the earth, has not been decided; but the result invariably is that, if a body of roots or potatoes be partly injured, the rotten ones will be found at the bottom. If the clamp be broadside to the north or east wind, the rotten ones will be found in the form of a triangle on the side where the wind has blown, the base of the triangle being at the bottom; if, however, the clamp had been situated with the end to the wind, the rotten roots will be found at that end in the form of an inverted M, that is, there will be a decayed triangle on each side. The length and depth to which this decay would extend along the clamp would of course depend on the severity and length of the frost.
The required precaution is therefore shown. In the case of clamps after several days of severe frost, with a prospect of its continuing, long manure, straw, hedge-trimming, or whatever may be at hand, should be packed 1 ft. or more thick, and 1 yd. or so wide on the surface soil at the base of the clamp, at the side on which the blast is impinging. It is the same with a brick building. If a bed or heap of potatoes or mangold be stored in a barn, either all over a bay or in one or more corners, and the same be well covered with straw, there will be no fear of the top or outer side of the heap being frozen. But the part of the heaps which are near to the wall will be found to have been frozen in the form of a triangle, as mentioned. The fact is the frost rises, so to express it, from the foundation of the brickwork being communicated with from the surface soil outside. This shows the importance of packing a body of long manure or a quantity of straw on the surface soil outside the brickwork.
Rowan Berries.—(a) Fill a large earthenware jar with strong salt and water. Put in the berries; tie it down. They will keep in this way till Christmas, (b) Gum them well all over so as to make them adhere to their stalks, and sealing-wax the ends where cut from the tree, and keep them in a tin box till required for use.