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Rhubarb Sauce
4 pounds rhubarb (cut in squares) 2 pounds brown sugar 1/4 cup vinegar 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon cloves 1 teaspoon allspice 1 teaspoon salt Red pepper to taste.
An ingredient list rather than a method, in the manner of many entries in this book — the assumption is that any cook knows a sweet-sour preserve is simmered down until thick. Here is what the list actually asks for.
- Method, since none is givenCombine everything in a wide non-reactive pan and simmer, stirring often, until the rhubarb has collapsed and the syrup coats a spoon — roughly 45 minutes to an hour. Rhubarb throws a great deal of water, so the reduction is most of the work.
- Weights into cups4 lb rhubarb is about 14-16 cups of cut stalks. 2 lb brown sugar is about 4 1/2 cups, lightly packed.
- Cut in squaresProbably means the stalks trimmed and cut into short chunks. Only the stalks are used; rhubarb leaves are high in oxalic acid and are discarded.
- The vinegarA cup of ordinary cider or white vinegar at 5% acidity is right. Household vinegar of the period varied in strength, but there is no reason to seek out anything unusual here.
- Red pepperCayenne, added by the pinch. Start with 1/4 teaspoon in this quantity and taste at the end of cooking, when the sugar has muted the heat.
- Not a dessert sauceThe vinegar, salt and cloves put this squarely with the spiced relishes served alongside cold meat, ham or a plain roast fowl.
- Pan choiceUse stainless steel or enamel. Rhubarb's acid will pick up a metallic taste from bare aluminium or cast iron and dull the colour.
- Yield and keepingThe recipe gives no yield or processing instructions, so treat it as a refrigerator preserve — cool, jar, and keep chilled for a few weeks. For shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested canning recipe with its own times.
Rhubarb was the first thing to come up in a Canadian kitchen garden, often weeks ahead of anything else, and it appears all through the Five Roses Cook Book — a promotional volume issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and distributed in very large numbers to households buying its flour. Recipes like this one, where fruit is cooked down with sugar, vinegar and the standard trio of cinnamon, cloves and allspice, belong to the broad family of North American sweet pickles and "chow" relishes that filled cellar shelves before refrigeration. The technique is the same one applied to green tomatoes, crab apples and watermelon rind; rhubarb simply got there first in the season.