Home › The Principles of Cookery › Lemon Ketchup
Lemon Ketchup
Take six large fresh lemons. Cut off the rind very thinly. Make a deep incision in the end of each, fill it with salt, and afterwards rub salt all over them, using not less than three ounces. Let the lemons stand in a warm place for seven or eight days; then put them into an earthen jar, strew over them a quarter of an ounce each of mace, cloves, and cayenne; add two ounces of horse-radish, and, if the flavour is liked, one ounce of garlic or shallots. Put a pint and a half of best white vinegar into a saucepan, with half a blade of mace, and half an ounce of bruised ginger. Simmer it gently for three minutes, then pour it hot upon the lemons, etc. This pickle may stand for five months before it is strained; though, if required, it can be used at the end of two months. The colour would be improved if two or three bruised tomatoes were put with it. Probable cost, 1s. 8d. Sufficient for one quart of ketchup.
This is a Victorian store-cupboard seasoning rather than a table sauce: heavily salted lemons left to soften, then steeped in hot spiced vinegar and strained after months. Everything hinges on keeping the salt and acid high and the vessel non-reactive.
- Weights and volumesThree ounces of salt is about 85 g, a quarter ounce about 7 g, two ounces about 55 g. The pint and a half is an imperial measure, roughly 850 ml, not 700 ml.
- A blade of maceMace is the lacy outer covering of nutmeg; a blade is one whole dried piece, commonly reckoned as a quarter to half a teaspoon of ground mace. The recipe does not say whether the quarter ounce each of mace and cloves strewn over the lemons is whole or ground; if ground, 7 g is a heavy dose, roughly a tablespoon of each.
- CayenneA quarter ounce of cayenne, some 7 g, is around three to four teaspoons in one quart. This is a strongly hot condiment by design, and would have been used sparingly in sauces. Scale it back if you want a gentler seasoning.
- Salt typeUse plain sea or pickling salt. Iodised table salt and anti-caking agents cloud the finished liquid and can darken the lemons.
- The vesselAn earthen jar means a glazed stoneware crock. Glass is the modern equivalent. Do not use aluminium, copper or bare iron for either the simmering vinegar or the steeping, and use a plastic-lined lid rather than bare metal, which the vinegar fumes will corrode.
- "A warm place"In a Victorian kitchen this would mean a shelf near the range, warm but not hot; no temperature is given. The lemons should soften and give up their juice. Discard the batch if surface mould develops rather than trying to skim it.
- Simmering the vinegarThree minutes is all the recipe asks for, and it is enough to open the ginger and mace. Boiling the vinegar hard drives off acetic acid and weakens the preserving power of the pickle.
- Straining and storageAfter two to five months, strain through muslin and bottle. It yields about one quart, near a litre. Modern practice is to keep the strained ketchup in the refrigerator, where it will hold for months; the whole spices and other solids can be left behind.
- Cost1s. 8d. is Victorian shillings and pence, of the kind quoted throughout the book for household budgeting.
Before tomato took over the word, ketchup in Britain meant any thin, strained, keeping sauce built on salt, vinegar and spice: mushroom, walnut, oyster, cucumber and, as here, lemon. The name is generally traced to a Southeast Asian fermented fish sauce, and the English versions kept that character of a seasoning splashed into gravies, fish sauces and made dishes rather than poured over a plate. A bottle of lemon ketchup was infrastructure in a Victorian kitchen, a way of holding the flavour of fresh lemons for the months when they were dear or unobtainable. The bruised tomatoes suggested at the end are there purely for colour.