To Bottle Fresh Fruit (I)

Ingredients

• Fresh fruits
• such as currants
• raspberries
• cherries
• gooseberries
• plums of all kinds
• damsons
• wide-mouthed glass bottles
• new corks to fit them tightly

Instructions

1. Let the fruit be full grown, but not too ripe, and gathered in dry weather.
2. Pick it off the stalks without bruising or breaking the skin, and reject any that is at all blemished: if gathered in the damp, or if the skins are cut at all, the fruit will mould.
3. Have ready some _perfectly dry_ glass bottles, and some nice new soft corks or bungs; burn a match in each bottle, to exhaust the air, and quickly place the fruit in to be preserved; gently cork the bottles, and put them into a very cool oven, where let them remain until the fruit has shrunk away a fourth part.
4. Then take the bottles out; _do not open them,_ but immediately beat the corks in tight, cut off the tops, and cover them with melted resin.
5. If kept in a dry place, the fruit will remain good for months; and on this principally depends the success of the preparation; for if stored away in a place that is in the least damp, the fruit will soon spoil.