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Tomato and Celery Relish
1 onion, 1 large green pepper, 1 large bunch celery, 2 1/2 cups canned or fresh tomatoes} finely chopped 1 tablespoon salt 2 tablespoons sugar 2 allspice berries 2/3 cup vinegar Mix ingredients, heat gradually to the boiling-point, and cook slowly one and one-half hours. Cayenne or mustard may be added if liked more highly seasoned.
A small-batch cooked relish that reduces to a thick, sweet-sour spoonful for cold meat or sandwiches. Everything hinges on the long, slow simmer, which is what turns a watery vegetable mixture into something that holds together on a plate.
- Chop everything fine, and evenlyThe brace in the ingredient list means the onion, pepper, celery and tomatoes are all chopped finely before they go in the pan. Uneven pieces of celery stay stringy through the full hour and a half.
- Whole allspiceAllspice berries are the whole dried fruit, not ground allspice. Two berries in this quantity is a background note rather than a flavour; tie them in a scrap of cheesecloth so they can be lifted out, or substitute a scant pinch of ground allspice.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar of the period was variable; modern cider or distilled vinegar at 5 percent acidity is the right substitute for the two-thirds cup. Cider vinegar suits the tomato better than white.
- Drain canned tomatoesThe recipe does not say, but if using canned it is worth measuring the 2 1/2 cups after draining off most of the packing liquid; otherwise the mixture may take longer than the stated time to thicken.
- The simmerNinety minutes at a bare simmer, uncovered, stirring often as it thickens. It is done when a spoon drawn across the pan bottom leaves a track that fills in slowly rather than at once.
- SaltA tablespoon of salt is assertive by current taste, and it concentrates further as the relish reduces. Adding two thirds of it at the start and correcting at the end is safer.
- StorageThere are no processing instructions here, so treat this as a refrigerator relish: cool it, pack it into a clean jar and keep it cold, where it will hold two or three weeks. Do not treat the hot-pack-and-seal method implied by period practice as shelf-stable canning without a tested current recipe.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; expect something in the region of a pint once reduced, depending on how far you take it.
Cooked tomato relishes of this kind filled a whole chapter in American household cookbooks from the 1880s onward, sitting alongside chow-chow, piccalilli and chili sauce as the standard accompaniments to cold roast meat, croquettes and Sunday supper. Celery is the marker of the period: cheap, abundant after the Michigan and New York muck-land crops came in during the late nineteenth century, and used so freely that it turns up in soups, salads and pickles alike. What separates this from a true pickle is the modest vinegar and the long open simmer, which cooks the mixture down into something closer to a sauce than a preserve.