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Tomato Catsup
1 peck of tomatoes, 6 tablespoonfuls of salt, 4 tablespoonfuls of mustard, 2 tablespoonfuls of cinnamon, 1/2 tablespoonful of allspice, 1/2 tablespoonful of cloves, 1/2 tablespoonful of black pepper, 1/2 tablespoonful cayenne, 1 pint of vinegar. Boil the tomatoes until tender, rub through a sieve to remove seeds, add seasoning, and simmer three hours.
A plain nineteenth-century catsup: spiced tomato pulp reduced for hours, with no sugar and no thickener. The proportions assume a very large batch, so the first job is deciding how much of it you actually want.
- A peck of tomatoesA peck is eight dry quarts, roughly 12-13 lb of tomatoes. Quartering the recipe (about 3 lb tomatoes, 1 1/2 tbsp salt, 1 tbsp mustard, 1/2 tbsp cinnamon, a scant 1/2 tsp each of the remaining spices, 1/2 cup vinegar) gives a manageable pan and about a cup and a half of finished catsup.
- YieldA full peck cooked down three hours reduces to somewhere near 3 pints, depending on how watery the tomatoes are. Paste-type tomatoes give more catsup and less standing at the stove.
- Mustard means powder"Mustard" in a period spice list is dry ground mustard, not prepared table mustard. Whisk it into a little of the hot pulp before stirring it through, or it will sit in lumps.
- The salt is calibrated to the full batchSix tablespoons is in proportion for 13 lb of tomatoes reduced to a few pints, but it is easy to over-salt if you scale down carelessly. Add two-thirds of the salt at the start and the rest after the sauce has thickened, when you can taste what you have.
- CayenneHalf a tablespoon of cayenne across a peck is warm rather than fierce, but ground cayenne varies a good deal in heat between batches and brands. Start with half and adjust at the end.
- Three hours without scorchingUse the widest heavy pan you have, keep the heat low once the pulp thickens, and stir the bottom regularly. Ground spices sitting on a hot pan floor turn bitter, and that bitterness cannot be corrected.
- SievingCook first, sieve second, as written. A food mill or the coarse plate of a rotary sieve removes seeds and skins in one pass; a blender does not, and pulverised seeds make the catsup gritty and slightly bitter.
- No sugarThis is a sharp, savoury catsup, closer to a spiced tomato sauce than to the sweet bottled kind. That is period-correct, not an omission.
- StorageOne pint of vinegar to a peck of tomatoes is not enough acid to make this safe for boiling-water canning, and the recipe gives no processing instructions at all. Refrigerate and use within a week, or freeze in small containers; if you want shelf-stable bottles, follow a current tested tomato catsup recipe with specified acidification and processing times.
The word travelled a long way before it reached tomatoes. English "catsup" and "ketchup" descend from a Southeast Asian fermented fish sauce, generally traced to Malay kecap and related Chinese terms, and eighteenth-century English catsups were made from mushrooms, walnuts, oysters and anchovies -- dark, salty condiments for meat. Tomato catsup is an American development of the early nineteenth century. The absence of sugar is characteristic of home formulas of this type; heavily sweetened catsup is associated with the commercial bottled trade, where sugar and vinegar contributed both flavour and keeping quality. A home version like this one, spiced with cinnamon, cloves and allspice, still shows its descent from the older savoury sauces.