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Chili Sauce (If One peck ripe tomatoes)
If One peck ripe tomatoes, twelve onions chopped fine, one cup vinegar, two cups sugar, one tablespoon cinnamon, one-half tablespoon cloves, two tablespoons salt; simmer four hours.
— Mrs. Van Allen
A tomato condiment of the ketchup family, written down with the brevity of a cook who assumed you had made it before. The only real work is the four-hour reduction, and the only real decision the original leaves to you is whether to peel.
- A peck of tomatoesA peck is 8 dry quarts, roughly 12-14 lb of tomatoes. That is a large kettle's worth; halve or quarter the recipe unless you are putting up a season's supply.
- Twelve onionsReckon on perhaps 2 1/2 to 3 lb, which sounds like a lot against the tomatoes but cooks down to almost nothing in four hours.
- Peel or don'tMrs. Van Allen doesn't say. Receipts of this type often called for the tomatoes to be scalded and skinned first, since the skins curl into unpleasant threads over a long simmer. Blanch 30 seconds, shock, and slip the skins off.
- The four hours are the pointThis is a reduction, not a stew. Use the widest heavy pan you have, keep it at a bare simmer, and stir the bottom regularly once it thickens — the sugar will catch and scorch in the last hour. Expect to end with about a quarter of the starting volume.
- SpicesThe tablespoon measures point to ground cinnamon and cloves rather than whole. A half tablespoon of ground cloves is assertive by modern taste; start with half that and adjust at the end, when the sauce has concentrated and you can judge it.
- No chili in the chili sauceNo chili in this chili sauce — This version contains no capsicum at all; it is sweet and spiced only. Many other chili sauce receipts of the period do include cayenne or a chopped red or green pepper.
- StorageThere are no canning instructions here, and the vinegar-to-tomato ratio is far too low for safe water-bath processing as written. Treat it as a fresh condiment: refrigerate and use within two weeks, or freeze in small containers. If you want shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested chili sauce recipe with measured acidity.
- YieldA full peck batch gives roughly 3 to 4 pints of finished sauce, depending on how far you take the reduction.
Chili sauce was one of the standard American tomato preserves of the late nineteenth century, sitting between ketchup and a chunky relish — cooked long, sweetened, spiced with the baking spices rather than the hot ones, and served alongside cold meat, baked beans and croquettes. Collections of this kind gathered such receipts from named neighbors, and the attribution to Mrs. Van Allen is doing real work: it tells a local reader whose sauce this is and whether it is worth copying. The brevity is characteristic. Nothing is said about peeling, jarring or sealing because a cook putting up a peck of tomatoes in September was assumed to know.