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Whortleberry Catsup
To each gallon of fruit allow two quarts boiling water; pour over and let stand twelve hours. Press through sieve and to each gallon of the liquor allow one teaspoon each of pepper, cloves, mace, white mustard, and cinnamon. Simmer an hour, then strain, and to each quart allow onehalf pound sugar. Stir together and boil. Add lemon juice till sufficiently tart and dilute.
A thin, spiced fruit vinegar-less catsup of the sort nineteenth-century cooks poured over game and cold meat. The proportions are given by the gallon, so scale down before you start.
- WhortleberriesAn older English and New England name for wild berries of the heath family: bilberries (Vaccinium) in Britain, and in America applied loosely to huckleberries (Gaylussacia) and blueberries (Vaccinium). Cultivated blueberries work, though they are sweeter and less acid; the lemon juice at the end is added to taste.
- Scaling the gallonA gallon is 16 cups; a gallon of berries weighs roughly 5 lb. For a manageable batch use 3 cups berries (about 1 lb) to 1 1/2 cups boiling water, which keeps the recipe's 2:1 proportion of fruit to water. Note that the spices are measured against a gallon of strained liquor, not of fruit, so scale them to the liquor you actually get -- about 1/8 teaspoon each for two cups.
- The twelve-hour steepBoiling water is poured over the fruit and left to stand as it cools; this draws the juice rather than cooking it. Modern kitchens should cover it and refrigerate once cool rather than leave it on a counter; fruit liquor standing at room temperature for half a day may begin to ferment.
- SpicesUse whole spices where you can — cracked peppercorns, whole cloves, blade mace, a cinnamon stick, whole white mustard seed. They are strained out after the hour's simmer, and ground spice will cloud the catsup and make it gritty.
- MaceThe outer covering of the nutmeg, sold as blades or ground. If you have none, a scant pinch of grated nutmeg substitutes, but use less than you think.
- "Sufficiently tart and dilute"Genuinely open-ended. The intent is a pourable sauce, sharp enough to cut fat: add lemon juice a tablespoon at a time and thin with water only if the boiled syrup is thicker than heavy cream. There is no fixed proportion here.
- The boilAfter the sugar goes in, boil only until the sugar has dissolved and the sauce coats a spoon thinly. Fruit catsups reduce quickly and turn to jelly if pushed.
- Yield and keepingThe reduced quantity above gives roughly a pint. The original assumes bottling, but gives no processing directions and the acidity is not measured — keep it in the refrigerator and use within two or three weeks, or freeze it in small jars.
Fruit catsups were a whole family of condiments before tomato took the name for itself: walnut, mushroom, grape, currant, gooseberry and whortleberry versions all appear in nineteenth-century American cookbooks, all of them thin, spiced, and meant to be poured rather than spooned. The spice list here — pepper, cloves, mace, mustard, cinnamon — closely resembles the blends often used for English pickling, which may be why these sauces taste more like a sharp brown table sauce than like fruit preserve. Whortleberry belongs to the era's gathered-fruit economy: the berries were picked wild by the pail in New England and the upland South, arrived in quantity for a few weeks, and had to be turned into something that kept. A recipe like this one is doing exactly that work, offering the household a way to absorb a glut before it spoiled.