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French Pickles
1 peck green tomatoes. 1/4 peck onions. 1/4 pound white mustard-seed. 1 ounce allspice. 1 ounce cloves. 1 bottle mixed mustard. 2 tablespoonfuls black pepper. 1 tablespoonful cayenne. 1 ounce celery-seed. 1 pound brown sugar. Slice the tomatoes and lay them in salt for twelve hours; pour off the brine. Slice the onions, and put a layer of onions, tomatoes, spices and sugar into a bell-metal kettle, until the ingredients are all in. Pour in vinegar until well covered, and boil for one hour.--Mrs. Dr. S.
French Pickle. 1 gallon cabbage. 1/2 gallon green tomatoes. 1 quart onions. 6 pods green pepper, without the seed. 3 tablespoonfuls ground mustard, or seed. 1 tablespoonfuls ginger. 1 tablespoonful horseradish. 1 tablespoonful cinnamon. 1 tablespoonful cloves. 2 tablespoonful salt. 1 tablespoonful celery. 1/4 pound sugar. 1/2 gallon vinegar.
Chop up cabbage, tomatoes, onions, and pepper; sprinkle salt over it, and let it stand an hour or so, and pour off the liquor. Add spices and vinegar, boil all together until you can stick a straw through the cabbage and tomatoes. This, as you see, will only make a small quantity when boiled down.--Mrs. M.
Two versions of the same thing: a mustard-heavy mixed pickle of the sort more often called chow-chow. Both are recorded in volume measures that need translating before you shop.
- A peck of green tomatoesA peck is 8 dry quarts, which works out to roughly 12 to 13 lb of tomatoes. The quarter peck of onions is about 3 lb. This is a big batch by modern standards; halving or quartering it is reasonable.
- Bell-metal kettleBell metal is a copper-tin alloy, and vinegar attacks it. Use stainless steel or enameled cast iron. Never use bare copper, brass or unlined aluminum with a vinegar pickle.
- Bottle of mixed mustard"Mixed mustard" is prepared mustard, wet from a jar. The book gives no capacity and period bottles were not standardised, so treat it as a small jar's worth and adjust to taste; a plain yellow or brown mustard is closer to the original than a Dijon.
- The salt is unmeasuredThe first recipe says to lay the sliced tomatoes in salt for twelve hours without giving a quantity (Mrs. M.'s version does specify 2 tablespoonfuls). For the twelve-hour draw on 12 lb of tomatoes, figure on the order of a cup of coarse salt sprinkled between layers, then drained and, if it tastes harsh, rinsed.
- Vinegar strengthNineteenth-century household vinegar varied. Use a commercial cider or white vinegar at 5 percent acidity and do not dilute it, since the vegetables carry a great deal of their own water into the pot.
- An hour is a long boilGreen tomatoes hold their shape better than ripe, but an hour at a rolling boil will reduce the first recipe to a dark, jammy relish. Thirty to forty minutes at a bare simmer gives a pickle with some texture left. Mrs. M.'s straw test on the cabbage is the more useful gauge.
- "1 tablespoonful celery"Celery seed, as in the first recipe. Whole spice in a muslin bag keeps the finished pickle from turning muddy brown; loose ground spice is what gives these old relishes their color.
- Yield and keepingThe full first recipe makes a large batch, several quarts even after boiling down. Neither version says anything about sealing. Pack it hot into clean jars and refrigerate, or follow a current tested boiling-water-bath procedure for mixed vegetable pickles if you want it shelf-stable.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1879, is a collection of contributed receipts - its title page credits some two hundred and fifty ladies of Virginia and her sister states - and the initials at the end of each, Mrs. Dr. S., Mrs. M., are how the book credited them. That is why the same dish appears twice in slightly different dress. "French pickle" was a familiar nineteenth-century American name for a mixed pickle bound with mustard, distinguished from the plain brined cucumber; the name is usually taken to point at the mustard rather than at any actual French origin, though that reading is traditional rather than documented. Both versions are recognizably chow-chow, the end-of-season relish built on whatever the garden had left when frost threatened - hence green tomatoes, late cabbage and onions, all of them unripe or unglamorous produce made worth eating by sugar, vinegar and a heavy hand with spice.