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Spanish Pickles
1 peck green tomatoes, thinly sliced 4 onions, thinly sliced 1 cup salt 1/2 oz. cloves 1/2 oz. allspice berries 1/2 oz. peppercorns 1/2 cup brown mustard seed 1 lb. brown sugar 4 green peppers, finely chopped Cider vinegar Sprinkle alternate layers of tomatoes and onions with salt, and let stand over night. In the morning drain, and put in a preserving kettle, adding remaining ingredients, using enough vinegar to cover all. Heat gradually to boiling-point and boil one-half hour.
A large-batch green tomato chow-chow of the sort put up at the end of the season, when the vines still carried fruit that would never ripen. The quantities assume a household preserving for the winter; almost everyone will want to scale it down.
- A peck of tomatoesA peck is eight dry quarts, roughly 12 to 13 lb of green tomatoes. Quartering the whole recipe gives about 3 lb, which is a manageable batch in a 6-quart pot.
- The vinegar is unmeasured"Enough vinegar to cover" is the one loose measurement here, and it is the one that sets the acidity of the finished pickle. Use a cider vinegar labelled 5 percent acidity and add no water; expect roughly 4 to 6 cups for a quarter batch.
- Salt and the overnight standThe cup of salt is a draining agent, not seasoning. After the overnight rest, drain well and press gently; a brief rinse cuts the saltiness considerably, though the original does not call for one.
- Whole spicesCloves, allspice berries and peppercorns go in whole. Tie them in a square of cheesecloth if you would rather not bite into them later, and leave the mustard seed loose, as it is meant to stay in the pickle.
- Brown mustard seedBrown (Indian) mustard seed is hotter and more pungent than the yellow kind and is still sold in most spice aisles and South Asian groceries. Yellow seed will work but gives a much milder pickle.
- Preserving kettleUse a wide non-reactive pot -- stainless steel or enamelled cast iron. Bare aluminium, iron or copper will react with the vinegar and can dull both colour and flavour.
- The half-hour boilThirty minutes at a steady boil is right for this style: the tomatoes should turn translucent and the syrup thicken slightly. Stir often near the end, since the sugar will catch on the bottom.
- StorageThe book gives no sealing or processing instructions at all. Treat this as a refrigerator pickle, packed hot into clean jars, cooled and kept cold, and use it within a couple of months; if you want shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested canning procedure for a pickle relish.
- YieldThe full recipe makes something like 12 to 14 pints. A quarter batch yields roughly 3 pints.
Green tomato pickles were a common American thrift preserve in the nineteenth century, a way of using the fruit stripped from the vines before the first frost. The "Spanish" in the title is unexplained by the recipe itself; names of this kind were applied loosely to sweet-and-hot pepper pickles in this period, and no Iberian origin should be read into it. The same sort of formula travels under many names -- chow-chow, piccalilli, green tomato relish -- and the family resemblance is the mustard seed and the whole spices, held together by cider vinegar and brown sugar.