For preserving fruit, use about 3/4 of a pound of sugar to 1 pound of fruit and seal in air-tight glass jars.

For canning fruit, use from 1/3 to 1/2 the quantity of sugar that you have of fruit.

When making jelly, too long cooking turns the mixture into a syrup that will not jell.  Cooking fruit with sugar too long a time causes fruit to have a strong, disagreeable flavor.

Apples, pears and peaches were pared, cut in quarters and dried at the farm for Winter use.  Sour cherries were pitted, dried and placed in glass jars, alternately with a sprinkling of granulated sugar.  Pieces of sassafras root were always placed with dried apples, peaches, etc.

“FRAU” SCHMIDT’S RECIPE FOR APPLE BUTTER

For this excellent apple butter take 5 gallons of cider, 1 bucket of “Schnitz” (sweet apples were always used for the “Schnitz"), 2-1/2 pounds of brown sugar and 1 ounce of allspice.  The cider should be boiled down to one-half the original quantity before adding the apples, which had been pared and cored.  Cider for apple butter was made from sweet apples usually, but if made from sour apples 4 pounds of sugar should be used.  The apple butter should be stirred constantly.  When cooked sufficiently, the apple butter should look clear and be thick as marmalade and the cider should not separate from the apple butter.  Frau Schmidt always used “Paradise” apples in preference to any other variety of apple for apple butter.

CRANBERRY SAUCE

A delicious cranberry sauce, or jelly, was prepared by “Aunt Sarah” in the following manner:  Carefully pick over and wash 1 quart of cranberries, place in a stew-pan with 2 cups of water; cook quickly a few moments over a hot fire until berries burst open, then crush with a potato-masher.  Press through a fine sieve or a fruit press, rejecting skin and seeds.  Add 1 pound of sugar to the strained pulp in the stew-pan.  Return to the fire and cook two or three minutes only.  Long, slow cooking destroys the fine flavor of the berry, as does brown sugar.  Pour into a bowl, or mold, and place on ice, or stand in a cool place to become cold before serving, as an accompaniment to roast turkey, chicken or deviled oysters.

PRESERVED “YELLOW GROUND CHERRIES”

Remove the gossamer-like covering from small yellow “ground cherries” and place on range in a stew-pan with sugar. (Three-fourths of a pound of sugar to one pound of fruit.) Cook slowly about 20 minutes, until the fruit looks clear and syrup is thick as honey.  Seal in pint jars.

These cherries, which grow abundantly in many town and country gardens without being cultivated, make a delicious preserve and a very appetizing pie may be made from them also.

Aunt Sarah said she preferred these preserved cherries to strawberries.