I’m back with the old gardening book… we didn’t manage to plant any vegetables this year, and our apple tree has gone into a sulk and there is only a few miserable fruit on its branches, so I won’t be doing any preserving this year, no freezing, drying, bottling, jamming or chutneying.
Looking at the book Richard Sudell write in the 1930’s, published in about 1940, and the 1948 edition I have, there is a big section on what to do with your produce once you have it. You take a lot of time, trouble and hard work getting a good harvest, you need to take an equal amount of trouble saving it to be used over the autumn and winter – particularly during and after the war when food in shops was rationed.
I mentioned the different methods for storing root vegetables, in clamps and heaps, drying, and vegetables could be bottled. Sudell is extremely economical with words in this book, he is straight to the point with no flowery language or descriptions – the name of the book tells all ‘practical’ he says and practical he is. However, bottling fruit is so important that nearly eight pages are devoted to it, with a further two on bottling vegetables, plus another two pages on ,pickles and chutneys.
He has ten rules for bottling, including the picking of fruit, choosing, grading, washing, equipment – including rings, bottles and jars. There are plenty of illustrations and diagrams and then he goes through particular fruit with specific instructions:
- soft fruit, best carefully picked straight into the bottles using only firm sound fruit
- blackberries should be picked early, washed well, and preserved in syrup
- currants should be firm, ripe, good-sized and thin-skinned, stalks removed and gently washed
- gooseberries should be topped and tailed
- loganberries should be picked just under-ripe and not washed
- strawberries – don’t bother!
- tomatoes – there’s nearly half a page of instruction for tomatoes, washed, blanched, skinned, halved if necessary, brined
I like many people love the idea of those beautiful jars all along the shelves containing home-grown produce… the truth is in my family, and I would guess a lot of other modern families, no-one wants to eat those preserved fruits and vegetables… sad really…
Lois Elsden 
I agree, I had an allotment once and tended to give all my extra food away. I did used to think I should preserve for the winter especially after the work that goes into growing it. The idea of jars lined up in a row in a larder brings up a cosy image. However, the ingredients used for preserving I tend to try to stay away from … vinegar, brine and sugary syrup – yuk. Passatta is probably the one thing I would consider making if I had an allotment again – a good way to store tomatoes and apparently this is what Italians do. I guess olive oil could be used for preserving artichokes, that wouldn’t be so bad.
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It’s a quandary… we just don’t eat in the way we used to!
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It is all too easy to rely on the supermarket and the freezer! Our taste buds have changed as a result. It sounds an interesting book you have there though, if only for understanding how it used to be done and can be done!
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Yes indeed, but a lot of the advice is so sensible and practical, if ever I got the gardening bug again then I think I would refer to it for its simple, sensible and clear advice and instruction! As a historical “document” it is really fascinating.
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