Preserved Apricots

History

"Preserved Apricots" is recipe No. 103 in "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking" (San Francisco, 1881). Abby Fisher works at scale and by weight: "Weigh an equal quantity of sugar and apricots, or if you are going to preserve fifty pounds of apricots weigh fifty pounds of sugar." The syrup is made a day ahead — sugar with two gallons of water at the bottom of a porcelain kettle, boiled "until thick as honey" and set off the fire — then brought back to a boil before the fruit goes in. What follows is her distinctive rotation: the apricots come out of the boiling syrup every five minutes and a fresh batch goes in, "repeat the shifting of the apricots every five minutes for five hours when they will be preserved."

Preserving was Fisher's documented specialty and her livelihood. Her title page records two medals at the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute Fair in 1880 — one for the best assortment of jellies and preserves — and a diploma at the Sacramento State Fair in 1879, and by 1882 she was listed in her own right as a pickle manufacturer.

Fisher was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in June 1831 to Abbie Clifton. Genealogical research in San Francisco records identifies her father as James J. Andrews, an Orangeburg planter who held some seventy people in slavery, and an 1869 receipt from the Freedman's Savings and Trust in Mobile records her under her mother's name. Before 1865, censuses recorded only an enslaver's name with the age and sex of those he held, so no surviving record names Fisher herself; Karen Hess, who rediscovered her book, noted that absence of documentation. Unable to read or write, she dictated the book from "an experience of upwards of thirty-five years."

The historical record does not document a specific earlier origin for this particular method. It stands as Fisher's own, set down under her name.

Ingredients

• equal by weight apricots
• equal by weight sugar
• 2 gallons water

Instructions

1. Weigh equal quantities of sugar and apricots (for example, fifty pounds each).
2. The day before obtaining the apricots, place the weighed sugar in a porcelain kettle with two gallons of water at the bottom.
3. Boil the sugar and water until thick as honey, then set off the fire and let cool.
4. The next day, return the syrup to the fire and bring to a rolling boil.
5. Once the syrup is boiling, drop the apricots in and boil for five minutes.
6. Remove the apricots from the boiling syrup and set aside; put a fresh batch of apricots into the boiling syrup.
7. After five minutes, remove this second batch and replace with another batch.
8. Continue this shifting of apricots every five minutes for five hours total; when the five hours are complete, the apricots will be preserved.