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Cucumber Chow-chow
Chop fine six onions, six cucumbers, one head of cauliflower, half a small head of cabbage, half a peck of green tomatoes, and one red pepper, from which the seeds have been taken. Sprinkle lightly with salt and let stand over night.
Then drain, and add one teaspoonful of ground cinnamon, one teaspoonful of mustard seed, two teaspoonfuls of celery seed, two cups of white sugar, a teaspoonful of white pepper, and vinegar enough to cover the whole. Let boil about half an hour, then store in an earthen jar or in fruit jars, as canned fruit.
A late-season clearing-out pickle: whatever the garden still holds, salted overnight and boiled down in sweetened vinegar. The measurements are loose by modern standards, and the storage instruction is the part that needs rethinking.
- Half a peck of green tomatoesA peck is 8 dry quarts, so half a peck is about 4 quarts, on the order of 6 to 7 lb of green tomatoes. It is the largest single element in the mix, though the onions, cucumbers, cauliflower and cabbage together come to a comparable bulk.
- Total volume and yieldThe tomatoes alone are 4 quarts, and with the onions, cucumbers, cauliflower and cabbage the chopped vegetables come to a good deal more than that before salting. The finished yield depends on how hard you boil it down; it is a large batch, so have more jars ready than you expect to need.
- The overnight salting'Sprinkle lightly with salt' is not quantified; modern pickling practice for an overnight draw runs to a few tablespoons of pickling or kosher salt per 4 lb of vegetables. Use non-iodised salt; iodine and anti-caking agents cloud the brine. Drain well the next morning and press out the liquid, or the pickle will be watery.
- Vinegar strength is the gapThe original says only "vinegar enough to cover." Nineteenth-century household vinegar varied widely in acidity. Use commercial vinegar labelled 5 percent acetic acid and do not dilute it — the acid is what preserves the pickle, and low-acid vegetables like onions, cauliflower and cabbage give it nothing to work with on their own.
- Storage: do not follow this part'An earthen jar' points to crock storage in a cold cellar, and 'as canned fruit' refers the reader to the fruit-canning practice of the period, which the book does not spell out here and which cannot be assumed to meet current standards. For shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested boiling-water process for mixed vegetable pickles. Otherwise treat it as a refrigerator pickle and keep it cold, using it within a couple of months.
- Half an hour of boilingThirty minutes will reduce the cauliflower to mush. Add the cauliflower florets in the last ten minutes if you want any texture in the finished relish; the green tomatoes and onions need the full time.
- White pepper and one red pepperA teaspoonful of white pepper is spread thin across this quantity of vegetables, so the pepper is a background note rather than a dominant one. The instruction to remove the seeds suggests a fresh pod rather than dried chile or cayenne powder, though the recipe does not say whether it is sweet or hot; a red bell pepper is the closest common substitute.
- Two cups of sugarThat makes a moderately sweet chow-chow, in the northern style. The sugar is for flavour and body, not preservation, so it can be reduced without affecting keeping quality — the vinegar does that work.
Chow-chow is the standing American name for a mixed, mustard-or-spice-seasoned vegetable pickle, and the word is often said to come from the pidgin English of the China trade ports, where chow-chow meant a mixture or medley. The name is associated with more than one regional tradition: the turmeric-yellow, mustard-heavy chow-chow of the Pennsylvania Dutch counties and the greener, sweeter green-tomato relishes of New England and the South. This version belongs to the second family, and its real subject is the green tomato efore frost threatens, useless for the table and too abundant to waste.