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French Pickles
One peck green tomatoes sliced, six large onions sliced; mix these and throw over them one tea-cup of salt, and let them stand over night; next day drain thoroughly and boil in one quart vinegar mixed with two quarts of water, for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then take four quarts vinegar, two pounds brown sugar, half pound white mustard-seed, two table-spoons ground allspice, and the same of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and ground mustard; throw all together and boil fifteen minutes. -Mrs. President R. B. Hayes, Washington, D. C.
A sweet-spiced green tomato pickle of the chow-chow family, written in the shorthand of a cook who already knew the method. Two things are left unsaid: the drained vegetables go into the spiced vinegar for the second boil, and nothing here tells you how to keep it.
- A peck of tomatoesA peck is 8 dry quarts, which works out to roughly 12 to 13 lb of green tomatoes. With six onions and the syrup this fills a very large stockpot; halving the whole recipe is sensible for a first attempt.
- A tea-cup of saltA teacup was commonly reckoned at about 6 fl oz, so figure roughly 3/4 cup, though the measure varied. Use plain pickling or kosher salt rather than iodized table salt, which can cloud the brine.
- The salting stageOvernight salting draws water out of the slices so they stay firm. Drain hard and press gently in a colander; do not rinse away all the salt, as the recipe accounts for none elsewhere.
- The missing instructionAfter the diluted-vinegar boil, drain the vegetables again and add them to the spiced vinegar and sugar for the final fifteen minutes. Boiling the syrup alone and pouring it over raw-drained slices gives a much thinner, sharper pickle.
- White mustard-seedThis is the pale yellow mustard seed sold today, not the small brown Indian kind. Half a pound is a generous 1 1/4 cups; it stays whole and gives the pickle its texture.
- Ground spicesTwo tablespoons each of allspice, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and dry mustard will leave the syrup dark and muddy. Tying the whole-spice equivalents in cheesecloth gives a clearer result, though the original's cloudiness is authentic.
- Pan materialUse stainless steel or enamel throughout. Vinegar in bare copper, aluminium or cast iron picks up metallic flavour and grey colour, and period pickle directions commonly call for a porcelain-lined kettle.
- Yield and keepingThis makes a very large batch: the four quarts of vinegar alone come to eight pints before the vegetables are counted. The recipe ends at the boil and says nothing about sealing: pack hot into clean jars, cool, and keep refrigerated, where it holds for months. For shelf-stable jars follow a current tested boiling-water-bath procedure rather than this text.
- RestingThe flavour is raw and hot for the first week. Three to four weeks in the cold brings the sugar, vinegar and spice together.
The attribution is the point of this entry: Lucy Webb Hayes of Ohio was First Lady from 1877 to 1881, overlapping with the compilation of Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping in Marysville, which first appeared in 1877 and was reissued and expanded over several years, and the book leans hard on contributions from prominent Ohio women to establish its credentials. The name "French pickles" was applied loosely in nineteenth-century American cookbooks to sweet, mustard-spiced mixed pickles and signals refinement rather than any documented French origin; the same formula appears elsewhere as green tomato chow-chow or sweet tomato pickle. Its real reason for existing is the garden: green tomatoes are what remains on the vines when frost is coming, and a peck of them salted, boiled in vinegar and sugared away was a standard piece of late-season thrift in a household that expected to eat something sharp with cold meat all winter.