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Pepper Relish
12 large onions. 12 large green peppers. 12 large red peppers 12 large yellow peppers Chop exceedingly fine. Cover with boiling water slightly salted. Let stand ten minutes, then drain. Do this three times, the last time pressing in a cloth. Add one quart of vinegar, three cups of sugar, and cook slowly one hour.
A simple sweet-sour pepper relish of the kind kept on hand for cold meat and beans. The original assumes you know what to do with it once it is cooked, which is the one thing worth spelling out.
- Storage is the gapThe recipe gives no processing directions at all, only cooking. Treat what comes out of the pot as a refrigerator relish, good for several weeks in clean covered jars; if you want it shelf-stable, follow a current tested boiling-water-bath procedure for pepper relish rather than simply sealing hot jars and hoping.
- How many peppers that isTwenty-four large bell peppers run roughly 8-10 lb whole, or about 6-7 lb trimmed and seeded. This is a large batch by modern standards; halving it works without adjustment.
- "Chop exceedingly fine"This would have been done by hand or with a hand-cranked food chopper. A food processor pulsed in short bursts gets there faster, but stop while the pieces still read as pieces — puréed pepper turns the relish into a sauce that never sets up.
- Why the three scaldingsThe repeated boiling water, drain, and press cycle pulls out raw pepper harshness and a great deal of water, so the finished relish is concentrated rather than soupy. Skipping it gives a thin, grassy result. The final pressing in a cloth matters most; wring it firmly.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar in this period varied considerably. Use a standard 5% acidity cider or white vinegar — one quart is four cups.
- The hour of slow cookingCook uncovered at a bare simmer so the syrup reduces and thickens. If it still looks watery at an hour, keep going; if the pan is dry before then, the heat is too high.
- YieldExpect roughly 3 to 4 pints from the full quantity, depending on how hard you press the peppers and how far the syrup reduces.
- SeasoningThe only salt is what goes into the blanching water, which is largely drained away. Taste near the end of cooking and correct.
Pepper relishes multiplied in American cookbooks over the later nineteenth century, a period often associated with the rise of sweet-and-sour condiments. This one belongs to the plainest sort: no mustard, no spice bag, nothing but peppers, vinegar, and sugar, so that the color of the red and yellow fruit does the work. Books of this era filed such preparations under preserving because vinegar and sugar were themselves understood as the preservatives — which is one reason so many individual recipes, like this one, simply stop when the cooking stops.