Fruit syrups seem to be slowly taking the place of the homemade wines by which our great-grand mothers set such store. W. M. Williams, in his "Chemistry of Cookery" says, " We shamefully neglect the best of all food in eating and drinking so little fruit. As regards cooked fruit, I say jam for the million, jelly for the luxurious, and juice for all. With these in abun dance the abolition of alcoholic drinks will follow as a necessary result of natural nausea." Yet much of the fruit syrup which has been used in "temperance drinks" was composed of artificial colors and flavors, with hardly a trace of the fruits whose names they bore. Under the new pure food laws these will not be allowed to pass for the real article.
Homemade preserves for market.
Notwithstanding the consolidation of industries, there is a constant demand for high-grade home made preserves at prices as high as for other fine hand-work. Every detail must be looked after to secure perfection. The price-list of any first-class grocery in our large cities mentions certain " spe cialties" of Miss or Mrs. at fifty cents per quart-jar and upward. Even at the low est figure, a woman may earn more money at home than she can save from city wages, but she must control her conditions to secure a regular income in this way. Much cheap jelly has been made from poor fruit sweetened with glucose and flavored artificially, while in some sections of the country fruit rotted on the ground.
There are many combinations of fruits possible which would be more attractive to customers than some of the usual articles. Such are pears cooked in grape-juice, currants with raspberries, barber ries with wild apples. Insipid fruits are improved by combination with raisins, lemon-peel or spices. Ground spices are easily added and are not objec tionable in a dark marmalade or ketchup. Whole spices may be tied loosely in a bag, and cooked in water from which syrup is to be made, while, in some cases, oils and essences are preferred to either whole or ground spice.
Economies of preserving.
There are many women who would do better to employ some country friend to provide them with a supply of canned fruits, jellies and the like, than to do it for themselves if they must buy all the fruit. Whether for ourselves or for sale, much discretion is necessary to adapt the fruit at hand to the many varieties in preserves. We can sel dom raise or buy perfect fruit, therefore it must be sorted carefully. To preserve whole, select that of uniform medium size and good shape. From abnormal sizes and imperfect shapes parts may be cut to preserve, and the remainder used for mar malades and the like, with the fully ripe fruit which would not keep its shape to cook whole.
Clean skins and cores, undersized fruit and inferior parts will yield ample material for jellies and fruit syrups. This is the method we follow when cooking meats : the large, tender, sections for roasts and steaks, the smaller pieces of clear muscle for stews, the bones and tough parts for soups.
To keep its shape, fruit must be cooked slowly, a few pieces at a time in syrup ; for other prepara tions it is better to add the sugar later.
When a single variety of fruit must be the main dependence, it should appear in as many forms as possible, and with different flavors. Peaches, for example, may be cooked whole, or in halves, or in slices, with little sugar or much, with cracked pits for the flavor, or in spiced vinegar, or made into marmalade.
About one pound of fruit will be required for each pint-jar of preserve, and this pound will measure roughly, one quart before cooking. Thus, a woman may estimate the number of jars to be secured from a given quantity of fruit. In this way she can decide whether to buy fruit and pre pare it for herself, to pay some one else for skilled hand labor, or to depend on the factories.
Evaporating.
[The home evaporating of fruits under eastern conditions is described on pages 174 to 177. A note may be inserted here on the sun-drying of fruit in dry regions. There is practically no evap orating in California as it is understood at the East or in the moist-air sections of Oregon and Washington. Evaporating machines and houses are practically unknown as home devices, although they are used in connection with large canneries for the purpose of saving fruit which is a little too ripe for the canning process. Not' less than nine tenths of all the dried fruit produced in California is cured by sunshine in the open air ; and by wise use of sulfur fumes immediately after cutting dis coloration is prevented, so that California sun-dried fruit sells as "evaporated." Thirty years ago many evaporators were erected to apply the Alden and other pioneer processes, but they were all abandoned as soon as the proper, sun-drying process was developed. Since then repeated attempts have been made to introduce various styles of evaporators, without success, because no artificial drying agency is so cheap as sunshine acting under the very dry summer air and practical absence of rains. Con sult Chapter XXXV, Wickson "California Fruits," 3d edition ; also bulletins of Oregon and Washing ton Experiment Stations.—Editorl Canning.