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Green Tomato Pickle (Slice green tomatoes)
Slice green tomatoes and onions; sprinkle each layer with salt; let them stand until next day, them press all the juice out, and season very highly with red and black pepper, celery, mustard seed, a little turmeric, and some sugar; cover with vinegar, and cook until tender.--Mrs. M. D.
A typical nineteenth-century pickle receipt: proportions are left entirely to the cook, so the only real decisions are the salt draw and the spice level. Everything else is a matter of taste and patience.
- A workable set of quantitiesFor roughly 4 lb green tomatoes and 1 lb onions, use about 1/3 cup pickling or kosher salt for the overnight layering, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons yellow mustard seed, 1 teaspoon turmeric, and red and black pepper to taste. Two cups of 5-percent cider vinegar will cover the drained vegetables once they begin to give up liquid.
- The salt draw is the hingeThe overnight salting is what keeps the slices from collapsing into sauce. Do not skip it or shorten it, and press the vegetables firmly in a colander afterward -- any juice left behind dilutes the vinegar and slackens the finished pickle.
- Slice thicknessQuarter-inch slices hold their shape through cooking; anything thinner turns to mush. Firm, fully green tomatoes with no pink blush work best, since ripening fruit softens badly in vinegar.
- "Celery" means the seed"Celery" likely means the seed -- In pickle receipts of this period celery often meant celery seed, and about a tablespoon suits this batch. Chopped celery stalk is not wrong, but it will cook away to nothing and contribute little flavor.
- TurmericIt is there for color, not much else. A teaspoon turns the whole batch a bright mustard yellow; more makes the pickle taste dusty and bitter.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar of the period was not standardized and its strength varied. Use commercial vinegar labeled 5 percent acidity and do not thin it with water.
- "Cook until tender"Bring to a simmer and hold it 25 to 40 minutes, until the slices are translucent at the edges but still offer resistance. Boiling hard shreds the onions and clouds the syrup.
- StorageThis is a cooked refrigerator pickle as written; there are no jar or processing instructions here. Pack it into clean jars, cool, and keep it refrigerated, where it will hold a couple of months and improves after a week. If you want shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested water-bath procedure rather than this text.
- YieldThe quantities above give roughly three to five pints, depending on how much liquid is pressed out.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named and initialed Virginia housekeepers, is full of short receipts like this one -- signed "Mrs. M. D." and written for a cook who already knew what a pickle should look like. Green tomato pickle belongs to the long Southern habit of salvaging the end of the tomato row before frost, when the remaining fruit will never ripen; the same impulse is often said to lie behind fried green tomatoes, though that pedigree has been questioned, and it produced green tomato mincemeat. The spicing here -- mustard seed, celery seed, turmeric, sugar, vinegar -- is essentially the chow-chow and piccalilli formula that traveled through American and British kitchens all through the nineteenth century, and which the commercial pickle trade later standardized into the jarred relishes still sold today. Turmeric's role as a cheap yellow coloring in pickles is older than the book by a good century.