The complete cook book

Use only ripe grapes. Squeeze out the pulp and juice, and put it in a granite kettle over the fire until tender enough to remove the seeds easily. Take it off-, take out the seeds and put back the pulp with the hulls and cook fifteen minutes. Now sweeten to taste with sugar and cook fifteen minutes more. If they cook too long they will lose their grape flavor. Put in jars and seal tight. PRESERVED QUINCES. Use the orange quinces. Wipe, pare, quarter, and remove all the core and the hard part under the core. Take an equal weight of sugar. Cover the quinces with cold water. Let them come slowly to a boil. Skim, and when nearly soft put one-quarter of the sugar on the top, but do not stir. When this boils, and another part of the sugar, and continue until all the sugar is in the kettle. Let them boil slowly until the color you like either light or dark. FIG PRESERVES. Boil the sugar and water syrup as directed in previous recipe. Let the figs be firm, not dead ripe, or they will boil to a mass. They should be laid in alum the day before they are to be preserved, then taken out, washed, and put into the boiling syrup. Boil for three hours, or until transparent; then bottle as usual and seal up with wax. FIG PRESERVES (No. 2). Pick the figs fully ripe the evening before. Cut off about half the stem, and let them soak all night in very weak salt and water. Drain off the salt water in the morning and cover them with fresh. Make a thick syrup, allowing thiree-quarters pound loaf sugar to each 278 The Complete Cook Book. pound fruit. When it boils, drop the figs carefully in and let them cook till they look clear. When done take from the fire and season with extract of lemon or ginger. STRAWBERRY PRESERVES. Cap the berries. Put one and a half pounds sugar to each pound fruit. Let them stand twenty -three hours, and then boil thirty minutes. APPLE PRESERVES. To preserve apples through the winter, put a layer of dry sand on a shelf, then a layer of apples, and again a layer of sand, again a layer of apples and so on. Kept in a dry place, the apples will be found to be quite good till next June or July. Pears are best kept singly on boards, suspended in nets, or attached to lines of twine, secured by the stalks, and hung from one side of the storeroom to the other. TO MAKE ANY KIND OP FRUIT JELLY. Wash and drain the fruit, put it in a stone jar, and put the jar into a kettle of water over the fire ; let it boil, but see that none of the water gets into the fruit. When the fruit is tender it will begin to break ; pour it now into a flannel bag, but do not squeeze it— that will make the jelly cloudy. To each pint of juice strained add one pound or one pound and a quarter of white sugar and the half of the beaten white of an egg. Boil this rapidly, skim but do not stir the syrup, as stirring breaks its continuity and prevents its jellying. Boil it twenty minutes, and try a little in some cold water to find out if it jellies ; if it does not, boil it a little longer. Too much boiling or too slow boiling injures jelly and makes it ropy. Too much sugar will cause jelly to grain; the quantity used must be in accordance with the requirements of the fruit, acid fruit requiring more sugar and dead ripe fruit less. Red currants take more sugar than black currants ; they also take more time to boil to a jelly. A little practice and a few mistakes will make any one who takes pleasure in cooking, a good jelly-maker and preserver. The Complete Cook Book. 279