become large, and take care not to cut them in taking
off the stalks and buds. If gathered in the damp, or the gooseberry
skins are the least broken in the preparation, the fruit will mould.
Fill some jars or wide-mouthed bottles, put the corks loosely in, and
set the bottles up to the neck in a kettle of water. When the fruit
looks scalded, take them out; and when perfectly cold, cork them down
close, and rosin the top. Dig a trench sufficiently deep to receive all
the bottles, and cover them with the earth a foot and a half. When a
frost comes on, a little fresh litter from the stable will prevent the
ground from hardening, so that the fruit may more easily be dug
up.--Green gooseberries may also be preserved for winter use, without
bedding them in the earth. Scald them as above, and when cold, fill the
bottles up with cold water. Cork and rosin them down, and keep them in a
dry place.--Another way. Having prepared the gooseberries as above,
prepare a kettle of boiling water, and put into it as much roche alum
as will harden the water, or give it a little roughness when dissolved:
but if there be too much it will spoil the fruit. Cover the bottom of a
large sieve with gooseberries, without laying one upon another; and hold
the sieve in the water till the fruit begins to look scalded on the
outside. Turn them gently out of the sieve on a cloth on the dresser,
cover them with another cloth, putting some more to be scalded, till the
whole are finished. Observe not to put one quantity upon another, or
they will become too soft. The next day pick out any bad or broken ones,
bottle the rest, and fill up the bottles with the alum water in which
they were scalded. If the water be left in the kettle, or in a glazed
pan, it will spoil; it must therefore be quickly put into the bottles.
Gooseberries prepared in this way, and stopped down close, will make as
fine tarts as when fresh from the trees.--Another way. In dry weather
pick some full grown but unripe gooseberries, top and tail them, and put
them into wide-mouthed bottles. Stop them lightly with new velvet corks,
put them into the oven after the bread is drawn, and let them stand till
they are shrunk one fourth. Take them out of the oven, fasten the corks
in tight, cut off the tops, and rosin them down close. Set them in a dry
place; and if well secured from the air, they will keep the year round.
Currants and damsons may be preserved in the same way.

GOOSEGRASS OINTMENT