Alice Harris
VIRGINIA
3 heads cabbage ½ peck ripe tomatoes ¼ peck green tomatoes 1½ dozen onions 1 tablespoon black pepper seed 1½ dozen red and green
VIRGINIA CHOW CHOW
2 pounds brown sugar 1 teacup grated horseradish 1 ounce turmeric 1 ounce celery seed 1 tablespoon ground mustard peppers (seeds removed) Chop all finely; add one pint of fine salt and let stand over night; then put in a wire basket to drain, after which put in kettle with spice; cover with vinegar and boil a few minutes. Sincerely yours,
The workable recipe here is the Virginia chow chow, a large-batch vinegar pickle of the kind put up by the bushel in late summer. Expect roughly two to three gallons of finished relish, so scale down unless you have the storage.
- A peck, in poundsA peck is eight dry quarts, about 12-14 lb of tomatoes. The 1½ peck of ripe tomatoes is therefore something like 18-20 lb, and the green tomatoes another few pounds; the quantity given for them has lost its fraction and is almost certainly a quarter peck, about 3 lb.
- Teacup and dozenA teacup is about three-quarters of a cup, so the horseradish is roughly 6 fluid ounces grated. A dozen and a half onions is several pounds depending on size; "1½ dozen red and green peppers" most likely means sweet bell-type peppers rather than chillies, though the recipe does not specify.
- The salt draws, it does not seasonThe pint of fine salt is a dry brine to pull water out of the vegetables overnight. After draining, taste the mixture; if it is aggressively salty, rinse briefly and drain again, or the finished relish will be inedible.
- Drain hardThe wire basket step matters more than it looks. Tomatoes and cabbage hold enormous amounts of liquid, and chow chow that has not drained properly turns to soup in the jar and dilutes the vinegar.
- Vinegar strengthUse a vinegar labelled 5 percent acidity, enough to cover by an inch. "Boil a few minutes" means five to ten once the pan comes up; the vegetables should soften slightly but keep their bite.
- Turmeric and mustardAn ounce of turmeric is about four tablespoons, which is what gives chow chow its yellow. Ground mustard loses potency on the shelf; open a fresh tin, and mix both spices with a little vinegar to a paste before adding so they do not clump.
- Storing itThe recipe stops at the boil and says nothing about sealing. Pack hot into clean jars, cool, and keep refrigerated, using it within a couple of months; for shelf-stable jars follow a current tested water-bath canning procedure rather than this text.
- EquipmentA full batch needs a preserving pan of at least 12 quarts and a stainless or enamelled surface. Bare aluminium and cast iron react with the vinegar and turn the relish grey.
Chow chow is the American South's catch-all end-of-season pickle: whatever the garden still held in September, chopped fine and put down in spiced vinegar. Turmeric, mustard and celery seed mark it as a descendant of the English piccalilli tradition, itself named from the Anglo-Indian pickles of the eighteenth century, and the name is generally traced to that same trade vocabulary rather than to any single cook. The Virginia version leans sweet, with brown sugar and horseradish alongside cabbage and green tomatoes. Its presence in a collection that prints a performer's sign-off is telling: touring actors ate a great deal of hotel and boarding-house food, and a jar of relish from home was a practical thing to carry, keeping for months and making plain meat and cold cuts worth eating.