Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers

To Stew Fruit for Pies

All fruits that are not fully ripe should be stewed and sweetened. To boil a gallon of molasses at a time, and keep it to sweeten pies, is cheaper than sugar, and answers a very good purpose, where there is a large family. When fruit is fully ripe it does very well to bake in pies, without being stewed.

After washing the dried fruit, put it on to stew in a bell-metal kettle over the fire, or in a tin pan in a stove, let it have plenty of water, as it swells very much, and if it seems dry, put in more water. Apples take longer to stew than peaches, and should have more water. Fruit stewed in this way is very good to put on the table to eat with meat. Do not stir the fruit while it is stewing, or it will burn. Dried cherries and damsons may be stewed in the same manner, adding the sugar before they are quite done.