How to preserve an abundance of stone fruit
Richard Cornish
Photo: iStock
I have so much stone fruit – how do I preserve it? L. Handley
When I was growing up on the farm, my family inherited an orchard of gnarled fruit trees. Their limbs were cloaked in layers of lichen and riddled with various forms of canker. They had grown protected from the prevailing winds by a hedgerow of cypress. Every odd year they threw a surfeit of fruit. This was in the era before freezers, so some of the softer fruit were turned into jams. We cooked apricots with an equal weight of sugar plus the fleshy kernel of the apricot pip to add a marzipan note to the conserve, plus half lemons to add acid and pectin. Apricots love a touch of warm spice such as cinnamon or cardamom and even a pinch of salt.