The Preservation of Food in the Home. — Part II 1293 



Drying and evaporating fruits are no longer important household 

 processes. The perfection of cans and canrang methods, with the ability 

 to secure a product better than the evaporated product, has made it no 

 longer necessary for the housekeeper to depend on dried foods for winter 

 variety. Hence, drying has become a commercial enterprise and we 

 rarely see strings of apples drying before the fire or trays of com drying 

 in the sun. Dried fruit is an important farm product, however; many 

 farms in New York State own and operate evaporators and send quan- 

 tities of dried fruit to market. 



SUGGESTIVE RECIPES OR METHODS OF PROCEDURE 



No effort is made here to give an extended list of recipes, as the canning 

 and preserving of foods is not a matter of following a man-made rule 

 but of adapting scientific principles to processes of food preparation. If 

 the principles are clearly in mind and proper methods of making are fol- 

 lowed, nearly all foods may be successfully canned or preserved without 

 recipes. The following recipes are included, therefore, because they illus- 

 trate certain principles or because they may be suggestive to the house- 

 keeper. For further recipes the reader is referred to any good cookbook. 



Grape juice 



The ordinary way of crushing and stewing grapes in order to obtain 

 their juice does not yield a product that does full justice to the grape. 

 A better method is to crush the grapes, add i quart of water for each 16 

 quarts of grapes, and place the kettle containing them over a second 

 kettle containing hot water. The grapes are thus steamed, instead of 

 stewed, until tender; their juice is extracted in the usual way, by pouring 

 the cooked fruit into a jelly bag and allowing it to drip over night. Hold- 

 ing the strained grape juice over night in this way permits it to settle; 

 then the clear top can be poured from the sediment. 



The following day the juice is strained into bottles or glass fruit jars, 

 covers and rubbers are adjusted, and the bottles or jars are set on a rack 

 in the boiler or kettle or on the shelf of the steam cooker. If the boiler 

 or kettle is used, cold water is added until it comes up about two inches 

 on the bottle or jar. 



The water is then brought gradually to the boiling point and should 

 boil 30 to 60 minutes, according to the size of the jar used. The jars 

 or bottles are then sealed and the juice is ready for storing. 



No sugar need be used in making grape juice; it will keep satisfactorily 

 without sugar. If sugar is desired, add it to the juice before pouring it 

 into the container, using | to j cup of sugar for each quart of juice. 



