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LEMON KETCHUP (a quick way of making)
Take half a dozen fresh lemons. Cut them into slices, remove the pips, rub them well with three ounces of salt, place them in layers in a stone jar, and strew a little seasoning and spice between each layer, allowing a quarter of an ounce each of mace, cloves, and cayenne, two ounces of horse-radish, two ounces of mustard-seed, two ounces of allspice, and two ounces of white pepper. Boil two quarts of white vinegar, pour it hot upon the lemons, and let it stand until the next day. Strain, and bottle for use. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. per quart. Sufficient for two quarts.
A thin, sharp Victorian table sauce rather than anything resembling tomato ketchup. The whole thing is really a hot spiced vinegar infusion, and it works, but the measurements need translating.
- The hinge: it is an infusion, not a cooked sauceOnly the vinegar is boiled; it is poured over the salted lemons and spices and left overnight to draw out the oils and juice. Do not simmer the lemons in it, or the pith turns the sauce bitter and muddy.
- Imperial measuresCassell's quarts are imperial: two quarts is 80 fl oz, about 2.3 litres, not the 1.9 litres of two US quarts. The ounces are weight ounces throughout - 3 oz salt is about 85 g, 2 oz each of horseradish, mustard seed, allspice and white pepper is about 57 g apiece.
- A quarter ounce of cayenneThat is roughly 7 g, against the same weight of mace and cloves. Victorian cayenne was frequently adulterated, so its heat relative to modern ground chilli is uncertain; taste the strained sauce before bottling and expect real heat.
- The stone jarA glazed stoneware crock, valued because it does not react with vinegar. A glass bowl, a large preserving jar or a food-grade plastic tub does the same job. Avoid bare aluminium, copper or cast iron, which will pit and give the sauce a metallic taste.
- Horse-radish and mustard-seedFresh horseradish root, grated, not the creamed jarred sauce. Bruise the mustard seed in a mortar before layering so the vinegar can get into it; whole untouched seed contributes very little in a single overnight steep.
- MaceThe lacy outer covering of nutmeg, sold as blades or ground. Blades are better here since the sauce is strained; ground mace will cloud it. Nutmeg is a rough substitute, used sparingly.
- Straining and bottlingStrain through a double layer of muslin, not a colander, or the sauce stays gritty with spice dust. Bottle into scalded, dry glass with vinegar-proof lids - plain metal caps corrode.
- KeepingSalt and strong vinegar make this stable, but the fresh horseradish and lemon solids left behind are perishable, so strain thoroughly and keep the bottles in the refrigerator once opened.
- Yield and useTwo imperial quarts is a great deal of condiment for a modern household; halving or quartering the recipe is sensible. Use it as it was intended - a spoonful into fish sauces, gravies, soups and salad dressings, rather than as a dipping sauce.
Before ketchup meant tomatoes, it meant a thin, salty, keeping sauce, and the English kitchen made dozens of them: mushroom, walnut, oyster, cucumber, lemon. The word is generally traced to a Southeast Asian fermented fish brine, borrowed by English traders in the seventeenth century and applied thereafter to almost any dark, pungent bottled liquid used to season made dishes. Lemon ketchup belongs to the pale end of that family, closer to a spiced vinegar than to a relish, and its purpose was to give the flavour of lemon out of season to fish, soups and sauces at a time when citrus arrived by ship and did not keep. Cassell's flags this as a quick way for a reason: a number of earlier recipes salted the sliced lemons and left them to stand in the sun or a warm place, for periods that varied, before adding vinegar. Pouring the vinegar on boiling collapses that wait into a single night.