H6 THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



giving flavor to fruits, pass off or are modified by the curing processes. 

 These changes insure longer keeping in the product, give it greater food 

 value than fresh fruit, pound for pound, leaving it quite as digestible, but 

 not as refreshing and palatable. 



Peach-leather was a common dried peach-product in the old domestic 

 epoch before the coming of railroads, steamboats and the establishment 

 of canning and drying industries. Though not now common, peach- 

 leather is still made in many communities in the East, more particularly 

 in the southeastern states. The peaches are peeled, pitted and then 

 mashed into a thin layer which is dried in the sun or an oven, the resulting 

 product taking on the appearance of leather. Peach -leather is said to keep 

 indefinitely, this being its chief merit. 



Peach-brandy is still a commercial product of considerable importance 

 though the amoimt made nowadays, as compared with that made a hundred 

 years ago before prohibition began to be preached, is but a drop in the 

 bucket when the number of bushels raised is considered. According to 

 the Commissioner of Internal Revenue,' the quantity of peach-brandy made 

 in 1908, the last year reported, was 13,649.5 gallons, most of which came 

 from California. Peach-brandy is made by converting the sugar of the 

 fruit into alcohol and then distilling. The finished liquor contains about 

 50 per ct. alcohol. In European countries, peach-kernels are much used 

 in flavoring a liquor called Eau de Noyau. 



According to Bulletin 133, Bureau of Plant Industry, United States 

 Department of Agriculture, valuable fixed and volatile oils can be produced 

 from the kernel of the peach. Peach-stones are now burned as fuel by 

 most canneries, excepting small quantities sold to nurseries for propagation. 

 The possibility of producing oils from the kernels seems well worth looking 

 into, since there is now an enormous waste of this part of the fruit by 

 canneries. Oils extracted from peach-kernels may be used for the same 

 commercial purposes as the almond oils; namely, in medicine, for soaps, 

 cosmetics, perfumes and confections. The processes of extraction and 

 distillation are not complex and establishments equipped with steam 

 would have little difficulty in extracting these oils. It is said, too, that the 

 press-cake from which the oils have been extracted makes valuable stock- 

 foods or fertilizers owing to its high content of nitrogenous matter. It is 

 estimated that in California alone the quantity of peach-pits obtained as 

 a by-products of canneries amounts to 10,000 tons in a normal year; that 



' Information supplied by letter. 



