A sweet and simple Peach Butter, spiced as much or as little as you like.

jars of 1800s peach butter — Photo Credit: The 1800s Housewife.

Dear friends ~

I am so blessed with peaches this year. Thankfully, they don’t ripen all at once! The Reliance trees ripen a full two weeks before the Redhavens, so it allows for a nice chance to catch my breath between canning marathons!

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been filling the pantry shelves with Peach Marmalade, Preserved Peaches, Peach Cordial, Pickled Peaches, plain peaches preserved in juice, and many jars of this lovely Peach Butter that I’m sharing today.

Thick and flavorful, this is so easy to make. It’s one of those old-timey preserves that you really just can’t buy in the store, and I think that makes it even more special!

~ Anna

PEACH BUTTER

Take pound for pound peaches and sugar; cook peaches alone until they become soft, then put in one-half the sugar, and stir for one-half hour; then the remainder of the sugar and stir for an hour and a half. Season with cloves and cinnamon.
The Every-Day Cook-Book, 1892

Here’s a photo of the recipe as it appears in the cookbook:

recipe for an 1800s Peach Butter — Photo Credit: The 1800s Housewife.

A FEW COOKING NOTES:

A few quick cooking notes…

an old fashioned colander full of peaches — Photo Credit: The 1800s Housewife.

To peel or not peel

There’s definitely a step that’s assumed in this recipe. Other peach preserve recipes of the era generally specify whether you’re to peel and pare the peaches at the beginning, thus saving the need to put it through a sieve or colander to remove the peach skins later.

Alternately, they call for putting the peaches in with the skins at the beginning, then putting the whole through a sieve or colander. Often they call this step “sifting it”.

It’s not unusual for steps that were considered obvious to be omitted from recipes, much like adding “flour to roll”, and you were just to know, from your years of baking, how much was enough.

That said, I landed on the side of peeling the peaches first for this recipe, so I just could go smoothy from one step to another once I’d begun.

The sugar

Generally when brown sugar was to be used in preserving, it was specified that brown sugar was meant. When we just see “sugar” in the recipe list, the usual assumption would be to use regular white loaf sugar.

Unbleached white sugar is what I use for following this recipe.

jars of old fashioned peach butter — Photo Credit: The 1800s Housewife.

Spices

I’m convinced I failed my children somewhere in their “bringing up”, because neither of them really enjoys much spice. They’re young yet, though, so perhaps an appreciation of spicier things may still come with time.

The directions leave the amount of spices to the cook’s taste, and since this peach butter is going into many a lunchbox this winter, I kept the spices light for this batch. To four pounds of peaches and four pounds of sugar, I put two teaspoons of cinnamon, and one of cloves.

It’s delicious, and definitely enough to taste the spices, but left to my own devices, I’d probably put in an extra teaspoon of each.

a stack of jars of peach butter — Photo Credit: The 1800s Housewife.

This is such a simple, joyful way to put up some of those peaches from a bountiful season. My family loves this enough that I’ve made two batches this year. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

Until next time, ~ Anna

📖 Recipe

Peach Butter (1892)

A sweet and simple Peach Butter, spiced as much or as little as you like. From

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Ingredients

2 lb ripe peaches
2 lb sugar
2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cloves

Instructions

Take pound for pound peaches and sugar; cook peaches alone until they become soft,
then put in one-half the sugar, and stir for one-half hour;
then the remainder of the sugar and stir for an hour and a half.
Season with cloves and cinnamon.

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