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Chow-Chow Pickle (Gallon chopped cabbage onions)
1 gallon chopped cabbage. 4 onions. 2 pounds brown sugar. 2 pints strong vinegar. 2 tablespoonfuls black pepper. 2 tablespoonfuls of allspice. 2 tablespoonfuls of celery-seed. 1/2 pint mustard-seed. 1 tablespoonful ground mustard.
The cabbage and onions must stand in strong salt and water two hours, then place in a brass kettle, with the vinegar and spices, and sugar; boil until syrup is formed. Excellent.-Mrs. J. H. F.
A straightforward sweet-sour cabbage relish, but two things in the original need attention before you start: the kettle and the vagueness of the brine.
- Not a brass kettleBrass and copper react with vinegar, and boiling an acidic pickle in an unlined brass pot leaches copper into the food and dulls the color. Use stainless steel or another nonreactive pot; enameled cast iron works if the enamel is sound.
- The salt waterNo proportion is given. A conventional pickling brine is about 1/2 cup pickling or kosher salt per quart of water, enough to cover the vegetables. Drain and press the cabbage well afterward, or the finished chow-chow will be watery and oversalted.
- A gallon of chopped cabbageRoughly 3 to 4 pounds of trimmed cabbage, or about two medium heads. The recipe says only 'chopped' and does not specify how fine. Four medium onions will come to somewhere between 1 and 1 1/2 pounds.
- 1/2 pint mustard-seedOne cup of whole mustard seed, which is a great deal by modern taste but characteristic of nineteenth-century chow-chow. Yellow seed is milder than brown if you want to hold the heat down.
- Whole spicesThe allspice and pepper are presumably whole in the original manner. Tie whole spices in cheesecloth and lift the bag out at the end for a cleaner relish; leave them loose only if you do not mind grit and a muddy look.
- Strong vinegarTwo pints. The original does not name a type; use any vinegar of at least 5 percent acidity, and cider vinegar suits the style. Do not dilute what you buy — the acid is what preserves the pickle.
- "Boil until syrup is formed"Expect 30 to 45 minutes at a steady simmer, uncovered, stirring often once it thickens because the sugar will catch. It is done when the liquid coats the vegetables rather than pooling around them.
- Yield and keepingAbout 4 to 5 pints. The recipe gives no sealing instructions; pack it hot into clean jars, cool, and keep it refrigerated, where it will hold for a couple of months. For shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested water-bath canning procedure rather than improvising from this text.
Chow-chow reached American kitchens as a mixed pickle in the Anglo-Indian manner — the name is generally traced to the pidgin "chow-chow," meaning a medley or assortment, which British households in India applied to the sweet spiced pickles they brought home. By the later nineteenth century the word was current in Southern and Pennsylvania German cookery, where it described any chopped vegetable pickle boiled down in sweetened, spiced vinegar; Southern versions frequently used cabbage and onion as the base, with green tomatoes or peppers when the garden supplied them. Recipes like this one existed because a fall cabbage crop had to be dealt with all at once, and a heavily sugared, heavily vinegared relish was the reliable way to carry it into winter alongside the pork that dominated cold-weather eating. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and first published in 1879, gathered contributions from named Virginia housekeepers, which is why this one carries initials rather than an author — and why it ends with a one-word endorsement rather than a serving suggestion.