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CALIFORNIA FRUITS: HOW TO GROW THEM 



3. Replace the water with brine composed of four ounces of salt to a gallon 

 of water and allow to stand two days. 



4. Put in brine of six ounces of salt to a gallon for seven days. 



5. Put in brine of ten ounces per gallon for two weeks. 



6. Put finally into a brine containing fourteen ounces of salt to the gallon 

 of water. 



Much depends upon having pure water. Ditch or stream water should be 

 boiled before using. 



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 differs from the last process only in omitting 

 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 hand- 

 ling, 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 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 prepara- 

 tion at several points in the state and the general canneries are 

 also handling olives in considerable quantities. The process is 

 in the nrain like that of canning other fruits but special points 

 have to be learned through experience. The University investi- 

 gation 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 or bottles 

 they can be kept indefinitely with as great facility as any other 

 food product. The heating does not injure 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 neces- 

 sary 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. 



* "Olive Pickling, etc.," by F. T. Bioletti. Circular 24, University Experiment 

 Station, Berkeley, Cal. 



