348 CALIFORNIA FRUITS: HOW TO GROW THEM 



Pure- Water Process. The best pickled olives are made without 

 the use of lye, but this process is only practicable with olives whose 

 bitterness is easily extracted, and where the water is extremely pure 

 and plentiful, and even then it is very slow and tedious. It omits the 

 preliminary lye treatment. The olives are placed from the beginning 

 in pure water, which is changed twice a day until the bitterness is 

 sufficiently extracted. This requires from forty to sixty days or more. 

 The extraction is sometimes hastened by making two or three shallow, 

 longitudinal slits in each olive, but this modification, besides requiring 

 a large amount of expensive handling, renders the fruit peculiarly 

 susceptible to bacterial decay and softening. Altogether the pure-water 

 process can not be recommended for California, as it is too expensive 

 and uncertain. 



Green Pickles. Green pickled olives are made by essentially 

 the same processes as are used for ripe olives. The extraction of the 

 bitterness requires the same care. The olives are pickled soon after 

 they have attained full size, and before they have shown any signs of 

 coloring or softening. They contain at this time comparatively little 

 oil, and are in every way much inferior to the ripe pickles in nutritive 

 value. They are not a food but a relish. They are rather more easily 

 made than the ripe pickles, as there is less danger of spoiling. 



CANNING THE RIPE OLIVE 



The use of heat and hermetical sealing after the pickling process is 

 completed is a recourse to avoid the difficulties of ripe pickling and 

 canned olives, put upon the market in the same form as other canned 

 fruits, have recently become popular. There are special canneries for 

 their preparation at several points in the State and the general can- 

 neries are also handling olives in considerable quantities. The process 

 is in the main like that of canning other fruits, but special points have 

 to be learned through experience. The University investigation of 

 the effect of heat on the olive shows that ripe pickled olives, heated to 

 175 degrees F., kept perfectly for thirty-two months. By heating them 

 still higher in sealed cans on bottles they can be kept indefinitely with 

 as great facility as any other food product. The heating does not in- 

 jure the flavor and the texture, but, on the contrary, improves them. 

 Olives, preserved by heating do not require such strong brine, and it is 

 only necessary to add as much salt as the palate requires. The heating 

 causes some of the coloring matter to diffuse into the brine, so that the 

 olives are made a little lighter colored. With time, however, the 

 colored matter diffuses out in the same way from unheated olives, so 

 that at the end of a year the heated olives are actually darker in color 

 than the unheated. 



VARIETIES OF THE OLIVE GROWN IN CALIFORNIA 



tMany varieties of the olive have been brought to California from 

 southern Europe during the last thirty years. Fifty-seven varieties 

 have been analyzed and elaborately reported upon by the University 



