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Tomato Chutney
Take four pounds of tomatoes, one pound of apples, one ounce of crushed mustard-seed, half an ounce of grated ginger, half a dozen small onions, four ounces of salt, a small tea-spoonful of cayenne, a pint and a quarter of the best malt vinegar, and one pound of soft moist sugar. The tomatoes should be sound and not over-ripe. Break them into a preserving-pan, and add the apples in quarters, but not peeled or cored. Chop the onions, and add them, with all the other ingredients except the sugar, which is best put in when the mixture has begun to soften a little. The whole must be boiled slowly to a complete pulp that can be rubbed easily through a coarse hair sieve. It should be stirred well, and left for a day before bottling. Probable cost, 3s.
A straightforward vinegar preserve that needs little translation, but the pan you choose and the way you finish it matter more than the ingredient list suggests.
- Use a non-reactive panA Victorian "preserving-pan" was commonly copper or brass, which reacts badly with this much vinegar unless well tinned. Use stainless steel or heavy enamel; untreated aluminium may pit and taint the chutney.
- The measuresAn imperial pint and a quarter of vinegar is 25 fl oz, near enough 3 US cups. Four pounds of tomatoes and a pound of apples give roughly 3 to 4 lb of finished chutney, or about three pint jars.
- Soft moist sugarThis is the period term for what is now sold as light brown or light muscovado sugar — damp, fine-grained, and slightly molasses-flavoured. Ordinary light brown sugar is the direct substitute.
- Why the sugar goes in lateAdded at the start, sugar sets the fruit skins and slows the breakdown to pulp; it also increases the risk of catching on the base during a long boil. Hold it back until the tomatoes and apples have collapsed, as instructed.
- Unpeeled, uncored applesThe skins and cores are there for pectin and are meant to be left behind in the sieve. Do not tidy the recipe up by peeling — they contribute to the body of the finished chutney.
- The sieveA coarse hair sieve was the Victorian equivalent of a food mill. A mouli or a stainless colander with a wooden pusher does the same job; a blender does not, since it purées the skins and pips back in.
- Salt levelFour ounces of salt in about six pounds of raw ingredients is heavy by current taste — a preserving quantity rather than a seasoning one. The vinegar does most of the preserving, though the salt plays a part, so expect a sharp, salty condiment.
- Bottling"Left for a day before bottling" lets the pulp settle and the flavours marry. Modern practice is to ladle it hot into sterilised jars with vinegar-proof lids and seal at once; either way it wants a month in the dark before it is worth eating.
Chutney comes from the Hindi chatni, a fresh-ground relish of fruit, herbs and spice; the sweet-sour, long-boiled, vinegar-preserved version sold in British kitchens is an Anglo-Indian reworking, built for shipping and storage rather than for eating the day it is made. By the time Cassell's was compiled, bottled chutney was a fixture of the British table, eaten with cold meat and curry alike, and homemade versions like this one were a way of using a glut. That the tomato is the base is itself a marker of date: tomatoes were slow to gain acceptance in British cookery and only became a common garden and market crop in the second half of the nineteenth century. The costing of three shillings is given as a matter of course, in the manner of the household manuals of the period.