Home canning, drying and preserving

This chapter is just two pages long, but interesting as a “fruit butter” is perhaps not something we are accustomed to seeing or making. Mrs Andrea begins by saying:

“This is a popular way to do up fruit, especially useful where school lunches are to be prepared.”

The acknowledgement of the fact that these are not “essential” methods of cooking here is interesting — she writes that they are generally made for providing some variety. There are three options for recipes here, and in all of them the sugar quantities are variable, depending on how sweet the fruit is, whether it is in season, or how the cook likes their fruit butter to taste. It is a lot freer than some of the other recipes previously.

The three recipes in the chapter are for apple butter, apricot butter and peanut butter. The peanut butter required four quarts of each unroasted Virginia peanuts, and four quarts of unroasted Spanish peanuts — but I am sure it would work with either.

I ended up making the apple butter at home with my roommates — as one of the simpler recipes in this lengthly, wordy cookbook, it definitely had to be done. The butter tasted like autumn in a spread, and we demolished several jars within just two weeks. It was more labour-intensive than we initially anticipated, but the stirring was a good way to pass the time.