CANNED FRUIT.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3554, 29 November 1882, Page 4

CANNED FRUIT.

Canning is now so generally practiced, and tho process bo well known, that many words upon it seem superfluous. Success depends mainly upon the following points .—Good fruit, fully but not over-ripe, and freshly gathered from vines or trees ; reliable cans, with soft, new or good rubbers ; good sugar, sufficient heating to eject the air ; filling full while hot, and careful screwing down of tops. No slops of juice should be left upon rubber or top of jar, but all wiped off carefully. Also the top should be screwed down at intervals, while the can is cooling, bo long as it can be made to turn. Straw-

berries and peaches should not be cooked too long if you would retain the fresh-fruit color and flavor, yet each berry or piece must be fully heated through and the whole brought to a boil. In canned fruit, the sourer the fruit the more expensive generally, as more sugar is requisite to make it good. Any and all fruits may be canned without any sugar whatever, but as the sugar has to be added before the fruit is made use of, this is no special economy in the end, and the better way is to put sufficient sugar to the fruit, before heating, to make it palatable. Among the fruits which ere good with a very small allowance of sugar, are raspberries, blackberries, whortleberries, pears, and some varieties of peaches and grapes. The juicy fruits are less difficult to keep ,- the very dry fruits are more inclined to mould or sour in the can.

While canned fruit is much cheaper than preserves, and generally conceded to be more wholesome, yet one sometimes tires of it, particularly if the same varieties are made use of year after year ; then for a change, or to make up a greater variety, preserves may come in play. If the preserves are to be kept through the hot weather unsealed, then equal weights of sugar and fruit must bo used, but a less quantity of sugar will often do as well if the fruit be canned, and will then keep for any length of time. Jams, marmalades, jellies and pickles may be canned if one has fears for their for their keeping. Tomatoes may be preserved with two-thirds (or less) the usual amount of sugar, and are better than with pound for pound, but the same care must be taken in canning them as with unpreserved fruit. To preserve plums, make a syrup of good brown sugar, and when skimmed till clear, pour it boiling hot over the plums, having picked out all imperfect or unripe ones. Let them remain in the syrup two days and then drain it off; make it boiling hot, skim it and pour it over again ; let them stand another two days, then put them over the fire and simmer gently till the syrup is reduced and rich. Take one pound of 6ugar to each pound of fruit, unless sealed.