The Old Way
… there are four different ways of canning:
1. Open kettle method for fruits and tomatoes; prepared fruit or tomatoes are filled hot into sterilized jars, and hermetically sealed.
2. Cold pack for fruits, tomatoes, etc.; prepared fruit or tomatoes are placed in sterilized jars, covered with hot water or syrup, processed at boiling point half-closed, and hermetically sealed.
3. Hot pack for fruits and tomatoes; prepared fruit or tomatoes are filled into sterilized jars, processed at boiling point, and tightly sealed.
4. Meats and nonacid vegetables, processed in steam pressure canner above 212°F.—Home Canning for Victory: Pickling, Preserving, Dehydrating, 1942
The New Way
There are only two processing methods recommended for the home canning of foods …
Boiling-Water Method—Acid foods are processed in a boiling-water canner.… A temperature of 212°F is reached and must be maintained for the time specified by the recipe.
Steam-Pressure Method—Low-acid foods must be processed in a steam-pressure canner. In order to destroy all bacteria, their spores and the toxins they produce, low-acid foods must be superheated to a temperature of 240°F and held there for the time specified by the recipe.”—Ball Blue Book: Guide to Home Canning, Freezing & Dehydration, 1997
When reminiscing, the first thing women who managed a home during the war years remember is their Victory Garden. The joy of producing and preserving their own food was an experience they never forgot. As a matter of fact, most of them continued to grow a vegetable garden and to can its bounty for many years to come.
Backyard gardens were encouraged during World War I and continued through the Depression as a way of supplementing the family food supply. When the National Victory Garden Program was announced at the end of December 1941, increasing production in time for the 1942 season was not a problem. It was also a program that everyone could be involved in together, no matter their age or gender. By 1943, America had taken on the responsibility of feeding our European allies. This and the need for canned products to feed the U.S. troops, led to shortages and eventually rationing of commercially canned fruits and vegetables. The government announced that although the 1942 harvest was a big success, Victory Gardeners were to plant, harvest, and can even more in 1943. But they needn’t have worried. The Victory Garden and home-canning programs were so popular and successful that by the summer of ’43, the peak of Victory Garden activity, there were nearly 20 million Victory Gardens in America and they produced a third of all vegetables used. In December of that year, the War Food Administration announced that “American pantries are bulging with the largest stocks of canned goods in history.” My mother exemplifies the energy with which homemakers followed the government’s call to can as she proudly remembers that by the fall of 1943 she had over 600 jars of food in her basement that she had “put up” with no one else to help. This must have been some of the activity I remember in our wartime kitchen.
While the gardening seemed to work without a hitch, the canning process provided some difficulties. Because canning was the number-one choice for preserving the Victory Garden, equipment became scarce. Home canners were encouraged to form cooperative groups to share both equipment and labor. Canning centers were set up in many towns where women could come and use pressure canners to “put up” meats and nonacid vegetables. It was big news when the March 1944 issue of American Cookery reported that “the War Production Board has released half a million canners for home use—good news to the housewife. These canners are made of enamel and in one size—seven quart or nine pint capacity to be used for the water bath method of canning acid fruits and vegetables.” The large numbers of inexperienced canners working with less than ideal equipment because of the shortages opened the possibility for disaster. Directions for safe canning were in every magazine along with headline warnings about the dangers of botulism. Government bulletins reminded canners that all nonacid vegetables and meats must be canned in a pressure canner, that oven canning was risky, and that all home-canned vegetables should be cooked for fifteen minutes before they were tasted even if they had been canned under pressure.
Home-front cooks heeded the warnings and found the experience so rewarding that they became reluctant to use up the stores they had worked so hard producing. Soon magazine articles were telling them, “Don’t Hoard Your Home-Canned Foods,” “Eat It—Don’t Save It!” Good Housekeeping magazine warned, “There are two mistakes you can make in using your home-canned foods. The first—serving favorites too often. The second—using your supply so sparingly that you’ll have some left over when the summer’s garden crop comes along.” Menus appeared using the home-canned sauces and condiments such as Beet Relish, Canned Green-Tomato Relish, and Quick Chili Sauce as accompaniments. Articles showed colorful jars of corn, beets, spinach, tomatoes, green beans, and cabbage, coming to the table as Corn Fritters, Creole Cabbage, Harvard Beets, Scalloped Spinach and Tomatoes, or Snap-Bean Salad.
Dehydration and freezing were explored as additional ways of food preservation. Commercial dehydration facilities experimented on a wide variety of products. While only dried vegetables for soup mixes and a brief flurry of pumpkin and cranberry flakes for the holidays were available for home use, these facilities produced dehydrated vegetables, fruits, juices, milk, and meat as well as the infamous powdered eggs for the armed services and our Allies abroad. The advantages of reduced perishability and greatly reduced volume and weight made them invaluable in the effort to get as much food as possible to the war front quickly. Home dehydrators were just coming on the market, but were not known to be very reliable. Most home drying was done by old-fashioned methods. Our family dried corn and green beans in trays on a kerosene stove in the backyard, and my aunt was able to make very good dried apples using the heat from the pilot of her gas stove. But home drying was never an important alternative to canning.
Clarence Birdseye’s frozen foods had been available on the consumer market since 1930, but home refrigerators had very little freezer space and most families reserved that for ice cubes and ice cream. Families that did want to freeze food or buy and store frozen food had to rent space at a frozen-food locker plant. When they wanted to use a box of frozen food they had to drive to the locker plant during business hours and take a package out of their locker. Although the frozen foods were a lot more like fresh foods than their canned counterparts, the system was not very convenient. It was not until home freezers and refrigerators with large freezer sections arrived in the 1950s that freezing became an option for most families. The concept of using frozen food was still so unusual in the early 1940s that a Good Housekeeping article took the space to answer the question, “What are frozen foods?”
Times have changed and so has preserving (see here). People don’t just can to save things for the winter anymore; if they are going to that bother, they want to have a unique product that will add an exciting touch to a dish or serve as a special homemade present for a friend. The first group of recipes in this chapter fit that description. The remaining dishes are old-fashioned vegetable recipes, some using produce fresh from the Victory Garden and some that might be made with home- or commercially canned vegetables.
Getting Ready to Can
These days all products that will be jarred and stored at room temperature must be processed in some way. Here’s how to get started:
1. Purchase new replacement lids. Wash all jars and bands.
2. Shortly before food is ready for processing, place jars and bands in a large kettle and cover with water. Heat to a boil and boil rapidly 10 minutes. Do not remove from water until ready to fill.
3. Heat replacement lids and water to cover to a boil in a small saucepan. Simmer 10 minutes. Do not remove from water until ready to use.
4. Fill and seal jars leaving 1-inch headroom for low-acid vegetables and meat, ½-inch headroom for fruit and tomatoes, and ¼-inch headroom for jellies, pickles, and relishes.
5. Process using the method and time specified in your recipe. If using a water bath canner, place jars in a canning rack and lower into kettle of boiling water. Add additional boiling water, if necessary, to cover lids by 2 inches. If using a pressure canner, follow manufacturer’s directions.
6. After processing, cool jars to room temperature; label and store in a cool dry place. If any do not seal, use immediately or reprocess with new jars and lids.
