The fruit is ripe, I’ve dusted off the old Fowlers Kit and dragged it out from under the house and I have picked, peeled, cored, and packed many, many pears for preserving!

Fowlers Vacola Preserving

Fowlers Vacola had humble origins as a fruit-bottling business started by Joseph Fowler at the rear of a small house in Burke Road, Melbourne.  By 1915 the company of J. Fowler & Co. had begun producing home-bottling kits containing a sterilizer, bottles, lids, rings and a thermometer. Initially Fowler travelled the district, selling his kits door-to-door from the back of a cart. In 1920 he bought a shop in Hawthorn, and registered his business as a private company.

During the Depression Fowlers Kits became a household name. In 1934 Fowlers Vacola Manufacturing Co. Ltd was registered as a public company. Housewives, nationwide, were urged to bottle their own fruits and jams by ‘Mrs B Thrifty’, the dainty cartoon character who graced the firm’s advertisements.

Today Fowlers Vacola range of Vacuum Preserving and Food Dehydrating equipment and accessories are enjoying renewed popularity as consumers turn to back to traditional methods of food preparation and storage.

Preserved Pears

• Pears
• Light Sugar Syrup (1 kg sugar in 5 litres water)

Method

• The fruit should be selected when the peel has just turned a nice yellow.  If gathered when green, they may be stored for a few days until in condition for bottling, but care should be taken not to let them get over-ripe
• Peel the pears with a sharp knife, cut into halves, or if very large, into quarters
• Using a Pear Corer remove the hard core
• If cutting in halves, leave the stem running from the core to the tapered end, as this helps to hold the Pear together, and thus minimises cloudiness when finished
• Drop the peeled Pears into a solution of 1 tbsp of salt to 4 pints of water, until ready to pack in the bottles.  This solution prevents the fruit from discolouring
• Just before packing the fruit into the bottles, rinse each piece under running water to remove any ‘salty’ taste which the solution may have imparted on the fruit.
• Pack the fruit as closely as possible and immediately cover with the Syrup
• Place rings, covers and clips on bottles and place in the Fowlers kit
• Bring to 200F degrees, allow to fall to 180F and at that temperature until 2½ hours have elapsed since the thermometer first registered 200F degrees.

Disclaimer:  Be prepared for lots of ‘uninterrupted’ time, tolerance for a messy kitchen and patience!  It is so worth it when you crack open a bottle of preserved pears in the winter to have on your porridge.  Just call me ‘Mrs B Thrifty’!