To Can Peas

Raw peas, cold water, three hours in a wash boiler, tighten the lids when cold.

From: How to Cook Vegetables
Published: 1890
Yikes Scale: Yikes

Exactly as printed, 1890

Fill glass jars full of uncooked peas, then pour in sufficient cold water to fill to the very top, and lay the tops on the jars. Place straw or hay in the bottom of a wash boiler; place the jars on this, or better still, stand in a wire frame.

Pour around sufficient cold water to half cover the jars. Put the boiler over a moderate fire, cover closely with the lid and boil steadily three hours. Lift out the jars, see that each is filled with boiling water to overflowing, screw on the covers as tightly as possible, stand aside, where the air will not strike them, to cool. When cold, again screw the covers, wipe the jars, and place them in a dark, cool, dry place. If the peas shrink in cooking, it is well to empty one jar to fill the others.

How to Cook Vegetables, 1890. Public domain; transcription unaltered.

So what happens if I make it?

Three hours does not fix it. Water in an unpressurised boiler cannot exceed about 212°F at sea level, and less at altitude, while botulinum spores need roughly 240°F to be destroyed.

What you have made is a sealed, moist, oxygen-free, low-acid environment held at room temperature — which is the precise set of conditions the organism requires.

Notes from the 21st century

The straw is sound practice. It stops the jars cracking against the metal boiler. The method is careful about everything except the one thing that matters.
Tightening lids after cooling is wrong too. The seal should form during processing. Tightening afterwards can break a partial seal and admit air.
Peas, corn and beans are the three. The low-acid vegetables that modern guidance singles out. This book cans all of them the same way.

Also in this book

Mayonnaise Dressing — A quart of oil beaten into two raw yolks, then kept for a week in a cool place.

Don't take our word for it. The complete book is online, free and searchable.

Read the original page →

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