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Ripe Tomato Pickle
3 pints tomatoes, peeled and chopped 1 cup chopped celery 4 tablespoons chopped red pepper 4 tablespoons chopped onion 4 tablespoons salt 6 tablespoons sugar 6 tablespoons mustard seed 1/2 teaspoon clove 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon grated nutmeg 2 cups vinegar Mix ingredients in order given. Put in a stone jar and cover. This uncooked mixture must stand a week before using, but may be kept a year.
This is a raw crock pickle: nothing is heated, nothing is sealed, and the mixture is meant to sit at room temperature for a year. That storage plan is the problem, and it is not one that a change of jar or a longer wait can fix.
- Why it fails: the acid is diluted and unmeasuredTwo cups of vinegar are poured over three pints of chopped raw tomatoes, celery, onion and pepper, all of which release their own water. The finished brine's pH is unknown and cannot be judged by taste, so there is no way to establish that it sits in the safe range for an uncooked, unprocessed preserve.
- Tomatoes are no longer reliably acidTomatoes are not reliably acid enough on their own -- Period recipes treated tomatoes as a high-acid fruit. Some tomatoes, particularly very ripe or low-acid varieties, can approach or exceed pH 4.6, which is why current canning guidance requires added acid for plain tomatoes. A raw tomato relish built on the old assumption is not protected.
- Onion and celery raise the risk furtherOnion and celery add low-acid vegetables -- Chopped onion and celery are low-acid, and low-acid mixtures that are neither heated nor measurably acidified can support Clostridium botulinum, whose toxin gives no smell, taste or gas to warn you. Nothing in this method -- no boiling, no hot pack, no measured acidification -- addresses that organism.
- A covered stone jar is not a sealA stoneware crock with a loose cover is not an airtight container, and crock pickles of this kind were typically kept somewhere cool, with any surface mould skimmed off. Removing portions all year reintroduces air and bacteria each time. Kept at modern room temperature it will spoil.
- The salt is a seasoning, not a cureFour tablespoons of salt across roughly two quarts of vegetables and vinegar is well below any curing concentration. It flavours the pickle and draws out juice, but it does not preserve it.
- If you want this flavourThe spicing — mustard seed, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg with celery and red pepper — belongs to the sweet-sour American tomato relishes and is worth having. Use a current tested recipe for tomato relish or chow-chow, with the specified acid and a boiling-water process, rather than adapting this one.
- Reading the quantities"1/2 teaspoon clove" and the cinnamon are presumably ground, and the nutmeg is specified as grated; mustard seed is whole. Three pints of peeled chopped tomatoes is roughly 3 to 3 1/2 lb of whole fruit, and the book gives no yield.