Posted: 4/8/2008 9:54:41 PM EDT
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I heard about "sulfuring" today for the first time and Googled it when I got home. I'm sure there are tons of other methods and techniques that are either old and forgotten or region specific. The person who told me is not much older, but grew up in an entirely different environment. Sulfured Apples, anyone? Taken from The War Garden Victorious - Victory Edition 1919 HOME CANNING & DRYING of Vegetables & Fruits (Appendix II, p. 27) [Links to Google Books PDF for download]. It's a great resource for a somewhat more primitive society, in terms of technologic convenience. 
Anyone, else? |
| I seam to recall sulfur being the secret ingredient in certain brands of lemonade. |
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Just a little trivia, when I was boy fresh fruit was still pretty much seasonable in the area I lived. Sulpher apples were still quite popular then and were often served up on a stick just like candy apples in season. Like anything different, it is an acquired taste but after you have done without apples for while, you'll acquire it. It was once a powerful part of Americana a part that had died with our global economy and a part that wouldn't surprise me in the least that came back should that change. Tj |
i asked my wife about it and she said that she understood it to be mainly to preserve the coloring. an interesting testament to the OP's statement about lost ways of preserving food, my wife is in her early 30's and absolutely loves gardening. when she wanted to figure out how to preserve the fruits and vegetables the obvious choice was canning. she must have asked 30 or 40 different peolple, young and old about canning and how to do it. most of the people older than her remembered seeing their mother canning, but few knew how to do it. out of the people our age and younger, absolutely zero knew how to can. and a small portion didn't even know what canning was. 
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Sulfuring isn't really forgotten. Lots of grocery store or trailmix dried fruits are sulfured, such as pineapple, apple, and apricots. |
Interesting that the 3 of us (including me, now) who have heard of it are all in ETN. Must have been VERY popular here. As to the taste I read this in the Oak Ridger Linky: oakridger.com/stories/101303/com_20031013033.shtml
My friend says he has a sulfuring machine in his basement. From the description of the process, I can't imagine a need for a "machine". (Fire + Sulfur + Apples + Flour Sack = Sulfured Apples) Prolly just a metal tub or rack with a little plate to burn the sulfur on. And from the way he described it, his parents sulfured whole apples, not slices. According to one Google result, that allowed enough sulfur into the meat of the fruit to prevent browning but did not effect the taste, as long as the peel was removed. No info on how long whole sulfured apple would last, or proper storage. I have to find out more and give it a shot this summer. |
True, I've see sulfur compounds in ingredient lists, but I mean it is forgotten as something people do at home. Kinda like making soap, ya know? |
Its really an Appalachia thing. As little as 50 years ago in the mountains of Appalachia, people were still living pretty much like the western US in the late 1800s with many folks still living on self sustaining farms. With few major highways into the area and not that much of a market for fresh produce, there wasn't that much. Hard to sell an apple to a guy who has apples trees. To this day I probably still enjoy canned peaches or pears as much as fresh. Like most self sustaining farms, they consisted of a collage of small outbuildings each with a specialized purpose. Wood was abundant and still is in Appalachia and saw mills many on the farm or a close by neighor. Just like there was a smoke house for meat, there was a sulpher house for fruit. Typically early fruit would be dried on the front porch. It was quite decorate and a heavenly smell of course battling flies was a way of life and grandma's job to sit on the porch making sun tea and swatting flies in her wood rocker. Everybody had a role. Later in the season, the sun would become too hot to be on the porch and turn to clouds as fall set in and preservation turned from drying to sulpher. Sulpher apples were considered a special treat on Holloween night. Well those days are long gone now guys. Grandma no longer swats the flies and makes the tea, she's in a rest home and the kids instead of picking apples go to Krogers. Tj |
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Ok, here's another good one From www.joepastry.com/index.php?s=candied
The article goes on to discuss the arrival of cane sugar. I won't be growing any of that,  So, anyone know the process on the grape juice method?Now Tom, if you start talking about how you sat on the porch and watched the Legions march by, I'm gonna have to call BS . . . on the other hand you ARE ancient. |
| When I was a kid we used to dry a lot of fruit from our trees. We used the sulpher method before setting them out in the sun. You cut the fruit in half, take out the pit and place on a wood drying tray. Stack them in a box pour a pile of sulpher on the ground inthe box, light it and cover with a canvas tarp. Come back in a few hours and set the trays in the sun. One thing not mentioned above is that it keeps the bugs off the fruit as it dries in the sun. |