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Guava Chutney
To five pounds of guavas, peeled and crushed free of seed, add two pounds of brown sugar, and two quarts of strong vinegar. Simmer till smooth and thick then add two pounds chopped, seedless raisins, a small minced onion (or head of garlic) and let come to a boil. Remove immediately at this point and add one and a half tablespoons (small) each of powdered ginger and mustard; four of salt, and two small chopped red-pepper pods. Stir well and let stand over night. In the morning stir again, place on stove and bring to boiling point, then bottle or put in jars, sealing tight.
GUAVA SYRUP (For Iced Drinks or Pancakes) Make as for guava preserves, but including seeds, straining off the syrup and bottling while hot. Seal well. Dilute when required for use.
GUAVA SHRUB (For Iced Drinks) To six quarts ripe, sliced guavas add one quart of water and two and a half ounces tartaric acid or one quart strong vinegar. Let stand twenty-four hours, stirring occasionally (Do not let it ferment), then strain, add a pound of sugar to each pint of juice, scald for half an hour, and bottle while hot.
Three preserves from one fruit, written for a cook with a bushel of guavas and no thermometer. The chutney is the substantial one; the syrup and shrub are ways of using what is left.
- Which guavasUse fruit that is fragrant and gives slightly to the thumb but is not collapsing. The wording leaves it unclear whether the five pounds is weighed before or after peeling and seeding; expect a noticeable loss to peel and seed core if you weigh the whole fruit first.
- Getting the seed outThe gritty seed core is easiest removed by halving the fruit, scooping the pulpy centre, and pressing it through a coarse sieve or food mill; the shells can then be chopped. Working the whole fruit through a mill is faster than picking seeds by hand.
- "Strong vinegar"Undiluted vinegar rather than a watered pickling vinegar; ordinary modern cider or malt vinegar at 5 percent acidity is the nearest equivalent. Two quarts to five pounds of fruit is a lot of liquid, and much of it is meant to cook away.
- "Simmer till smooth and thick"The hinge of the recipe. Expect 1 to 2 hours of open simmering over low heat, stirring often as it thickens, until a spoon drawn across the pan leaves a track that closes slowly. Under-reduced chutney weeps in the jar.
- Ambiguous spoons"One and a half tablespoons (small)" is not a measurement anyone can convert with confidence; the author's "(small)" suggests a spoon less generous than a modern one, but older spoon sizes varied. Start with a level modern tablespoon each of ginger and mustard and taste after the overnight rest.
- Spices off the heatThe ginger and mustard go in after the pan comes off the boil, which suits them: prolonged boiling flattens powdered ginger and can turn dry mustard bitter. The overnight stand lets them bloom into the vinegar.
- Sealing"Bottle and seal tight" is open-kettle canning, which modern practice has abandoned. The chutney is acidic enough to be safely water-bath processed: fill hot jars, leave half an inch of headspace, and process 10 to 15 minutes, or simply refrigerate and use within a couple of months.
- Tartaric acid in the shrubTwo and a half ounces to six quarts of fruit is a souring agent, sold today with winemaking supplies rather than at the grocer. The vinegar alternative given in the recipe produces a sharper, more savoury drinking syrup.
- "Do not let it ferment"The 24-hour maceration should be covered and kept cool, ideally refrigerated. Any hiss, foam or yeasty smell means wild fermentation has started and the batch should be discarded rather than bottled.
- YieldThe chutney makes roughly 6 to 8 pints. The shrub, at a pound of sugar to each pint of juice, is a concentrate: an inch in the glass topped with cold water or soda is the intended proportion.
Chutney reached the English-speaking kitchen through Anglo-Indian households, the word coming from Hindi chatni, a relish pounded fresh and eaten in small quantities; the cooked, vinegared, long-keeping version in this recipe is the colonial adaptation, often said to have been built to survive a sea voyage and a pantry shelf. The guava, native to tropical America, had by the nineteenth century been carried to India, the Caribbean and southern Florida, and it slotted neatly into a formula written for mangoes: firm, acid, pectin-rich fruit that holds its shape in vinegar. The shrub is older still and travelled by another route, its name generally traced to the Arabic sharab, to drink, and its sweetened acid concentrate was one American answer to summer thirst before bottled soft drinks. That all three appear together under one fruit suggests something about how these books may have been organised: not by course or occasion, but by whatever was ripening in quantity and had to be dealt with before it spoiled.