Honey in Preserves

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 454, 5 March 1948, Page 22

Honey in Preserves

Dear Aunt Daisy, I wonder if you can help me with my problem. It is bottling fruit. First of all I shall give you my method which is simple and never fails. The syrups in proportion are: Pears, ¥lb. sugar to 1 quart water; peaches and nectarines, 341b. sugar to 1 quart water; apricots and plums, 1lb. sugar to 1 quart, and rhubarb, 114]b. sugar to 1 quart. First boil the syrup for 20 minutes, then add the fruit and cook till only just tender, (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) Lift from syrup and place in jars, pour syrup over and seal jars. That is all there is to it, Aunt Daisy. No messing about with ovens.or anything. But what I want to know is, can I still do it with this method but using honey instead of sugar? Last year I bottled some nectarines by two other methods, One, just pour boiling water over fruit packed in jars and seal. Cook it when wanted, And second, pack fruit in jars, hold under cold tap and fill, then leave immersed in tub of cold water a while and seal under water. Cook and sweeten when wanted. Quite good both of them, but the fruit must be whole and takes too much room, but handy if you’ve no sugar at all. "Vera," Thank you for a letter so full of information, Yes, indeed, you can use honey instead of sugar for bottling, and people who have done so assert that the flavour is really marvellous, Use 4, cup of honey instead of 1 cup of sugar, and boil the syrup as usual, Honey can be used in jam-making also, but in that case, add half the hbney to the fruit, stir it well in, and leave it to stand for an hour or so. Then heat it up, stirring constantly, and after 10 minutes’ boiling, add the remainder of the honey and cook as usual. For people who have only a little honey, you can bottle fruit beautifully by just making a light syrup of I or 2 tablespoons of honey to a pint of water and boiling, as usual, for 10 minutes. 7