Fruit drying was widespread in South-East Moravia and we can meet it both in the lowlands of Moravian Slovakia and in the hilly region of Wallachia. No wonder because fruit drying ranks among the basic ways of food preservation for winter. Suffi cient store of desiccated fruits was a necessity for every good housewife because it was the almost only possibility – in addition to expensive sugar and rare honey – how to add sugar to the most dishes. The dried fruits were boiled until they turn mushy; or they were ground to powder and used as cake fi lling. The crushed pears were sprinkled on the thick gruel instead of gingerbread, or add to semolina, millet or buckwheat thick gruels. For that reason, big attention was paid to fruit drying and plum stew. Fruits were also good commercial ware. The traders and the carters exported the dried fruits to the fairs in Vienna, Pest and Wroclaw. At the end of the 19th century, the downfall of fruit domestic market was caused by unusual occurrence of pests in fruit trees, by lower quality and by strong competitors from the Balkans. A certain response to other possibilities of processing the fruits was the production of the home-made fruit brandy – slivovice, supported especially by progressive fruit-farmers, press and educational societies. It was at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries when the basis for the present tradition of the famous Moravian slivovice production was laid down.
Fruits could be dried in several ways. In the sun, in the heated bread-ovens etc. In the regions with abundance of fruit trees and fruits, the farmers built special buildings – kiln-houses. They used to stand almost at every bigger homestead and later on, at least a few kiln-houses were operated in the villages. For the safety reasons they were built far from the homestead. We can fi nd them not only far behind the barns but also in the middle of the orchards.
We know several types of the kiln-houses which differ from each other in heating, utilization of hot smoke and handling with wicker racks. The technical skills of the builders and the applied progressive novelties, however, caused the most differences. The kiln-house consists of a small timbered or bricked room divided in two parts by a wall. In one part, there was a kiln and some thin shelves for the racks above it, the other one served as an entrance and handling room used also to store the fuel and the dried fruits. The oldest kiln houses had no chimney and the kiln mouth was placed outside the building. The more progressive solution used the heating channel in the upper part of the kiln, leading to the chimney, as it is at our kiln-houses. The most modern solution was applied at bricked buildings where the heating channels go from the fi replace into the walls and only then into the chimney.
The way of drying was identical for all the structures. The apples were sliced, the pears were halved and the plums remained as whole pieces. The fruits were put onto light wooden frames – racks. The fruits started being
