Super weird! Two of my jars of pear halves canned in syrup changed to a deeper, almost pinky colour while the other jars are the exact same off white. Same batch, same pears, same syrup, stored side by side in the same place (my basement).
Any idea why this may happen?
by PaintedLemonz
3 Comments
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I wonder if it’s the glass jars? If they are all from the same case and manufacturing lot, though, that rules that out.
What recipe did you follow for these?
Browning in fresh apples, pears, potatoes etc. is usually caused by oxidation of catechol, and the oxidation products of that reaction appear pink in low concentrations. So my initial thought is that they weren’t processed long enough to evacuate all of the oxygen during canning. There’s more headspace in the pinker jar on the right so that might be a possibility.
With no other information available, my only other guess would be that these were cold packed (based on the floating fruit) and you were filling jars with pears as you skinned and cored the (blanched?) fruit, and then added the syrup after all we’re filled. Those two jars would have been the first that got fruit in them, giving them slightly longer to absorb oxygen and oxidize beneath the blanched flesh (blanching prevents surficial browning), which would have then diffused out during storage.
Absent a recipe can’t say whether they’re safe, but if I followed my recipe for canned pears and they looked like that, I wouldn’t be concerned. Or have noticed, frankly; that’s a pretty subtle difference.