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Apple Catsup
Apple catsup is similar to apple butter, using as a foundation plain instead of cider apple sauce. Cook till thick, for each quart using a teaspoon each of ginger, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, mustard, onion extract, two of salt and a pint of vinegar. Simmer slowly till thick, (which may take an hour and a quarter), then bottle and seal while hot.
The instructions assume you already know how to make apple butter; this is that method with vinegar and a hot spice mix instead of cider and sugar. Quantities are given per quart of finished apple sauce, so scale to the fruit you have.
- Start with the sauce"Plain apple sauce" here is set against cider apple sauce, so apples cooked down with water rather than cider, and presumably without sugar, then sieved or pressed smooth. Roughly 3 lb of tart apples will give you about a quart of sauce.
- Onion extractThis was a bottled flavouring sold alongside vanilla and lemon extract, and is hard to find on general sale now. A small onion grated fine and cooked with the sauce, or about half a teaspoon of onion powder, covers the same ground; strain if you want it smooth.
- Pepper and mustardA teaspoon of each per quart is assertive. The "pepper" is most likely black pepper, ground, and the mustard almost certainly dry powder rather than prepared mustard, which would bring its own vinegar.
- The vinegarA pint of vinegar to a quart of sauce is what keeps this keeping, so do not cut it back. The recipe does not say which vinegar; period vinegar was often home-made and of variable strength, so use a modern bottled vinegar of known acidity (5 percent) to be sure of it.
- No sugarUnlike apple butter, this is unsweetened, which is why it reads as a savoury condiment. If your apples are very sour, a spoonful or two of sugar per quart balances it without changing the keeping qualities.
- Judging thicknessAn hour and a quarter at a bare simmer is a guide, not a rule. Stir often as it thickens or the bottom will scorch and taint the whole batch; it is done when a spoon drawn through the pan leaves a track that closes slowly.
- Bottling and storage"Bottle and seal while hot" was the standard hot-fill method of the period and relies entirely on the acidity. Treat the result as a refrigerator condiment, good for a month or two, or follow a current tested water-bath procedure if you want it shelf stable.
- YieldA quart of sauce plus a pint of vinegar reduces substantially, so expect noticeably less than you started with; how much depends on how thick you take it. It is used by the spoonful with pork, cold meat or cheese.
Before "catsup" meant tomatoes and nothing else, it meant any thin spiced condiment cooked down and bottled to be dribbled over meat: walnut, mushroom, oyster, cucumber, grape, plum and apple all had their versions in nineteenth-century American and English kitchens. The word is generally traced to a Southeast Asian fermented fish sauce carried west by traders, though by the time it reached books like this the fish had long dropped out and the sugar-and-vinegar-and-cloves profile had taken over. Apple catsup belongs to the thrift end of the tradition, a use for windfalls and second-quality fruit at the same season the household was already boiling apple butter, and a reminder of how thoroughly one cheap, storable fruit was expected to be worked through before it turned at last into a sharp brown sauce for the winter's cold pork.