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Chopped Pickles
4 quarts chopped green tomatoes 3/4 cup salt 2 teaspoons pepper 3 teaspoons mustard 3 teaspoons cinnamon 3 teaspoons allspice 3 teaspoons cloves 1/2 cup white mustard seed 4 green peppers, sliced 2 chopped onions 2 quarts vinegar Add salt to tomatoes, cover, let stand twenty-four hours, and drain. Add spices to vinegar, and heat to boiling-point; then add tomatoes, peppers, and onions, bring to boiling-point, and cook fifteen minutes after boiling-point is reached. Store in a stone jar and keep in a cool place.
A green-tomato chow-chow of the plainest kind: salt overnight, drain, then a short boil in spiced vinegar. The only part that does not translate is the storage.
- Storage is the weak pointA stone jar in a cool cellar was the original plan, and it depended on a cold larder and steady use. Treat this as a refrigerator relish and keep it in covered jars in the fridge, or process it by a current tested water-bath canning procedure if you want it shelf-stable.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar of the period varied in strength and was not standardised. Use a standard 5 percent cider or white vinegar; do not substitute homemade or diluted vinegar, since the acid is what preserves the relish.
- The salt is a draw, not a seasoningThree-quarters of a cup over four quarts of tomatoes pulls out a great deal of water in twenty-four hours. Drain well and, if you dislike a salty pickle, rinse briefly and press the tomatoes before they go into the vinegar.
- Green tomatoesThese are unripe fruit, firm and pale, not tomatillos and not green-when-ripe heirlooms. Core them and chop to a rough quarter-inch.
- SpicesThe cinnamon, allspice and cloves are meant as ground spices here, measured by the teaspoon; the mustard seed stays whole. Ground cloves at three teaspoons is assertive, so scale back to one or two if you want the tomato to show.
- Green peppersOrdinary green bell peppers, seeded and sliced thin. They are for body and colour, not heat.
- The fifteen minutesTime it from the moment the whole pot returns to a full boil, not from when the tomatoes go in. Longer than that and the tomato and pepper collapse into sauce.
- Let it sitThe flavour is harsh on the day it is made. Give it a week before serving; it improves over a month.
Chopped green-tomato pickle was one of the standard American answers to the end of the tomato season, when frost was coming and half the crop was still hard and pale. Recipes of this type appear under a scatter of names in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cookbooks -- chow-chow, chopped pickle, green tomato relish -- and the family resemblance runs through all of them: salt overnight to draw water, then a brief boil in spiced vinegar with onion and sweet pepper. The spice list, heavy on clove, allspice and cinnamon, is close to the mixture used for spiced fruit and for mincemeat in the same books. Cooked pickles like this belonged to the same autumn work as putting up tomatoes and making catsup, and they were eaten through the winter with cold meat, beans and hash.