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Tomato Butter
Take ten pounds of ripe tomatoes, skinned; four pounds of granulated sugar, three pounds of apples, about one quart of vinegar, half an ounce of stick cinnamon, half an ounce of ginger, one fourth ounce of mace, one fourth ounce of whole cloves. Tie the spices in a bag, put all the ingredients together, and boil three hours, stirring frequently. Less vinegar may be used.
A spiced tomato preserve in the American "butter" tradition — fruit cooked down with sugar, vinegar and whole spice until thick enough to spread. The quantities are large by modern standards, and the original assumes you already know how to fill and seal jars.
- Scale and yieldTen pounds of tomatoes plus three pounds of apples and four pounds of sugar makes a very large batch, several quarts of finished butter. Halving the recipe is sensible for a first attempt, and shortens the boil.
- Use a wide heavy panThe hinge of this recipe is evaporation without scorching. A wide, heavy-bottomed preserving pan or Dutch oven exposes more surface than a tall stockpot, and the sugar will catch and burn on thin metal no matter how often you stir.
- Three hours is a guide, not a ruleCook until the mass mounds on a spoon and a track drawn through the bottom of the pan stays open for a moment. Depending on how juicy the tomatoes are, this may come well before three hours or somewhat after.
- The applesPeel, core and chop them; a tart firm variety such as Granny Smith gives both acid and pectin, which is what makes the mixture set to a butter rather than a sauce. Weigh before peeling if you want to match the original.
- Vinegar strengthPeriod cider vinegar was variable; modern bottled vinegar is usually around 5 percent acidity. A full quart makes an assertively sharp preserve, and the original's own note that "less vinegar may be used" is worth taking — start with two to three cups and taste as it reduces.
- Whole spices onlyStick cinnamon, whole cloves, whole mace blades and a knob of bruised dried ginger, all tied in cheesecloth as the recipe directs. Weigh the spices rather than counting sticks or measuring by spoon. Ground spice will make the butter muddy and gritty over three hours of cooking.
- Skinning the tomatoesThirty seconds in boiling water and a plunge into cold water slips the skins. Core them and squeeze out the loosest seed jelly to shorten the cooking time.
- Sealing is not describedThe original gives no processing instructions. Either refrigerate and use within a few weeks, or fill and process jars according to current tested water-bath directions for tomato preserves — the acid and sugar here are ample, but the timing should come from a modern guide.
"Butter" in American preserving means texture, not dairy: a fruit pulp boiled down until it is smooth and spreadable, like apple butter, pear butter or pumpkin butter. Tomato butter appears in American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when a household with a productive garden faced far more ripe tomatoes in September than it could eat, and sugar had become cheap enough to use by the pound. The vinegar and the four whole spices — cinnamon, ginger, mace, cloves — put it close to the spiced tomato catsups and chili sauces that often appear in the same books; the dividing line between a sweet preserve and a savoury condiment was thinner then. The apples are doing quiet technical work as well as flavour work, supplying the pectin that tomatoes largely lack.