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Old Fashioned Methods of Preservation for food
Improvement in Bread
Take flour 5 lbs. Rice 1 lb. boil the rice very soft, if too thick, add a little warm water, then add your yeast. This makes 8 lbs. of bread.
Preservation of fresh meal
Put fresh meat in a close vessel containing vinegar, which will preserve it a considerable time. Tainted meet may be rendered good by pickling it in potash water for some time; before it is cooked however, it should be dipped in vinegar a short time, and then salted in brine.
Strawberry jam
Bruise very fine some scarlet strawberries, gathered when quite ripe, and put to them a little juice of red currants. Beat and sift their weight in sugar, strew it over them, and put them into a preserving pan. Set them over a clear slow fire, skim them, then boil them twenty minutes, and put them into glasses.
Raspberry jam
Mash a quantity of fine ripe dry raspberries, strew on them their own weight of loaf sugar, and half their weight of white currant juice. Boil them half an hour over a clear slow fire, skim them well, and put them into pots or glasses; tie them down with brandy papers, and keep them dry. Strew on the sugar as quick as possible after the berries are gathered, and in order to preserve their flavour they must not stand long before boiling them.
To salt hams
For three hams, pound and mix together half a peck of salt, half an ounce of salt prunella, three ounces of salt petro, and four pounds of coarse salt; rub the hams well with this, and lay what is to spare over them, let them lie three days, then hang them up. Take the pickle in which the hams were, put water enough to cover the hams with more common salt, till it will bear an egg, then boil and skim it well, put it in the salting tub, and the next morning put in the hams; keep them down like pickled pork; in a fortnight take them out of the liquor, rub them well with brine, and hang them up to dry.
To pickle in brine
A good brine is made of bay salt and water, thoroughly saturated, so that some of the salt remains undissolved; into this brine the substance to be preserved is plunged, and kept covered with it. Among vegetables, French beans, artichokes, olives, and the different sorts of samphire, may be thus preserved, and among animals, herrings.
To bottle damsons
Put damsons, before they are too ripe, into wide mouthed bottles, and cork them down tight; then put them into a moderately heated oven, and about three hours more will do them; observe that the oven is not too hot, otherwise it will make the fruit fly. All kinds of fruits that are bottled may be done in the same way, and they will keep two years; after they are done, they must be put away with the mouth downward, in a cool place, to keep them from fermenting.
To preserve grapes
Take close bunches whether white or red, not too ripe, and lay them in a jar. Put to them a quarter of a pound of sugar candy, and fill the jar with common brandy. Tie them up close with a bladder, and set them in a dry place.
To dry cherries
Having stoned the desired quantity of morcllo cherries, put a pound and a quarter of fine sugar to every pound; beat and sift it over the cherries, and let them stand all night. Take them out of their sugar, and to every pound of sugar, put two spoonsful of water. Boil and skim it well, then put in the cherries; boil the sugar over them, and next morning strain them, and to every pound of syrup put half a pound more sugar; boil it till it is a little thicker, then put in the cherries and let them boil gently. The next day strain them, put them in a stove, and turn them every day till they are dry.
To preserve strawberries whole
Take an equal weight of fruit and double refined sugar, lay the former in a large dish, and sprinkle half the sugar in fine powder; give a gentle shake to the dish, that the sugar may touch the under side of the fruit. Next day make a thin syrup with the remainder of the sugar; and allow one pint of red currant juice to every three pounds of strawberries; in this simmer them until they are sufficiently jellied. Choose the largest scarlets, not dead ripe.
To keep gooseberries
Put an ounce of roche alum beat very fine, into a large pan of boiling hard water; place a few gooseberries at the bottom of a hair sieve, and hold them in the water till they turn white. Then take out the sieve, and spread the gooseberries between two cloths; put more into the sieve, then repeat it till they are all done. Put the water into a glazed pot until the next day, then put the gooseberries onto wide mouthed bottles, pick out all the cracked and broken ones, pour the water clear out of the pot, and fill the bottles with it, cork them loosely and let them stand a fortnight. If they rise to the corks, take them out and let them stand two or three days uncorked, then cork them close again.