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Relish
Twelve green peppers, twelve red peppers, fourteen mediumsized onions; chop fine, pour boiling water on them and let stand fifteen minutes; pour this water off, pour on more water and let stand five minutes; then drain and add one tablespoon salt, one pound sugar, one quart vinegar; boil together fifteen minutes.
— Miss Leah Timmerman
A sweet-sour pepper and onion relish of the sort that stood on the table beside cold meat. The proportions are sound; the only real gap is storage, since the receipt stops the moment the boiling ends.
- What the quantities come toThe twelve green and twelve red peppers are presumably sweet peppers, and fourteen medium onions perhaps 4 lb. Chopped fine by hand or pulsed in a food processor, that is a very large batch — expect several quarts finished.
- A pound of sugarGranulated sugar at a pound is about 2¼ cups. The sweetness is deliberate: with the vinegar it is what makes this a relish rather than a pickled salad.
- Vinegar strengthNineteenth-century household vinegar was variable. Use plain cider or white vinegar at 5 percent acidity, which is the modern standard and gives the sharpness the receipt assumes.
- Why the two soakingsThe double scalding pulls out raw onion harshness and the grassy bite of the peppers, and softens them before they ever meet the vinegar. Drain thoroughly the second time or the finished relish will be watery.
- The fifteen-minute boilThat is enough to bring the syrup together and take the crunch off without collapsing the vegetables. Stir toward the end — the sugar concentrates and the bottom will catch.
- Storage, which the receipt omitsThis is not a tested canning recipe: there are no jar, headspace, or processing instructions, and the acidity of the finished mixture is unknown. Treat it as a refrigerator relish, pack it hot into clean jars, cool, and keep it cold, using it within a few weeks. For shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested pepper relish procedure.
- ServingMeant for cold roast meat, ham, sausages and beans. It is also good stirred into mayonnaise or spooned over a plain omelette.
Chopped pepper relishes like this one belong to the late-summer glut, when sweet peppers and onions came in together and a cook turned a bushel into something that would sit in the cellar through the winter. The style — vegetables scalded, then boiled briefly in sweetened vinegar — is the same family as the chow-chows and piccalillis that fill the pickle chapters of American community cookbooks from the 1880s onward. Books of this kind often carried each receipt signed by the woman who contributed it, so a name like Miss Leah Timmerman's stood as credit for the recipe.