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Chow-Chow
2 quarts small green tomatoes 12 small cucumbers 3 red peppers 1 cauliflower 2 bunches celery 1 pint small onions 2 quarts string beans 1/4 lb. mustard seed 2 oz. turmeric 1/2 oz. allspice 1/2 oz. pepper 1/2 oz. clove Salt 1 gallon vinegar Prepare vegetables and cut in small pieces, cover with salt, let stand twenty-four hours, and drain. Heat vinegar and spices to boiling-point, add vegetables, and cook until soft.
A large-batch mixed vegetable pickle from the era when a household put up several gallons at a time. The proportions are sound; what the text leaves out is the salt weight and any instruction for keeping the finished pickle.
- Scale firstAs written this is a very large batch; the vegetables alone run to many quarts before the gallon of vinegar goes in. Halving or quartering everything works without adjustment, since the vinegar is the preservative and its ratio to vegetables stays the same.
- The salt is unmeasured"Cover with salt" meant a dry salting heavy enough to draw water out overnight. A workable modern reading is about 1/2 cup of pickling or kosher salt per 2 quarts of prepared vegetables, tossed through and left in a colander over a bowl. Do not use iodised table salt; it clouds the brine.
- Drain, and consider rinsingTwenty-four hours under that much salt leaves the vegetables aggressively seasoned. Draining alone follows the original; a quick cold rinse and a firm press gives a pickle most people today find more palatable.
- Vinegar strengthA gallon of ordinary distilled white or cider vinegar at 5 percent acidity is what this needs. Wine vinegars and unlabelled artisan vinegars can run lower and should not be substituted in a pickle of this size.
- Whole spices, not groundThe allspice, pepper and clove are given by weight, and in a pickle of this date would almost certainly have been whole. Tie them in cheesecloth so they can be lifted out; loose cloves left in for weeks turn the whole crock medicinal.
- Two ounces of turmericRoughly a third to a half cup of ground turmeric, and it is doing the work of colour more than flavour. It stains readily: wooden spoons and porous plastic may not come clean, and it will colour your hands for a day or two.
- "Cook until soft" is the trapTen to fifteen minutes at a bare simmer is enough. The cauliflower, beans and cucumber should still have some resistance; boiled to genuine softness they collapse into a uniform mush over the following weeks in the vinegar.
- Green tomatoesThese are hard, fully unripe tomatoes, not tomatillos and not underripe red ones. They hold their shape where a ripe tomato dissolves.
- Keeping itThe original assumes a stone crock in a cold cellar. Pack hot into clean jars and refrigerate, where it will keep for months, or follow current tested guidance for water-bath processing if you want it shelf-stable.