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Green Tomato Sauce
Peel and slice the tomatoes. To two gallons add: 5 tablespoonfuls ground mustard. 2 1/2 tablespoonfuls ground black pepper. 2 tablespoonfuls ground allspice. 2 tablespoonfuls ground cloves. 3 gills white mustard-seed. 1 gills celery-seed. 1 gill salt. 1 pint onions, chopped fine. 2 quarts brown sugar. 2 quarts vinegar.
Beat all the spices, except the mustard-seed, and boil together until thick as marmalade.--Mrs. S. T.
Green Tomato Sauce. 2 gallons tomatoes, sliced. 3 tablespoonfuls salt. 3 gills of mustard-seed, whole. 2 1/2 tablespoonfuls pepper. 1 1/2 tablespoonfuls allspice. 3 tablespoonfuls mustard, beaten smooth. 1 teaspoonful cloves. 1 teaspoonful cinnamon. 1 teaspoonful celery-seed. 1 pint onions, chopped fine. 1 quart sugar. 2 1/2 quarts vinegar.
Mix thoroughly and boil till done.--Mrs. P. Mc
Two versions of the same green tomato pickle, run together by the typesetter and distinguished mainly by how heavily they are salted and spiced. Both are enormous by modern standards and both assume a cook who knows what "done" looks like.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. So 3 gills of mustard seed is 1 1/2 cups, and the first recipe's 1 gill of salt is 1/2 cup — against 3 tablespoons in the second version, which is the more palatable of the two.
- The scaleTwo gallons of peeled, sliced green tomatoes is roughly 12 to 14 lb of fruit and will fill a very large preserving pan. Quartering the whole list gives about 3 lb of tomatoes and a manageable batch of about 1 1/2 to 2 pints.
- Use a non-reactive panTwo and a half quarts of vinegar simmered for hours will strip an unlined copper or bare cast-iron pot and take on a metallic taste. Stainless or enamelled only.
- "Beat all the spices"This means pound them in a mortar. Only the mustard-seed is held back in the first recipe; nothing is said about the celery-seed either way. Buy pre-ground and skip the pounding; the whole mustard seed stays whole and gives the finished sauce its texture.
- When to add the mustard seedMrs. S. T. excludes it from the beating but never says when it goes in. Add it whole with everything else at the start — it softens over the long boil and would stay hard if stirred in at the end.
- "Thick as marmalade" / "boil till done"This is the only doneness cue given and it is the one that matters. Expect 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours at a steady low boil, stirring often as it thickens; it is ready when a spoon drawn across the bottom leaves a track that fills in slowly rather than instantly with liquid.
- Salting firstMany period recipes for green tomato pickle have the sliced fruit salted and drained before cooking. Neither version here says so.
- Keeping itNo sealing or processing instructions are given at all. Treat what you make as a refrigerator pickle, good for a couple of months, and follow a current tested procedure with measured headspace and boiling-water times if you want it shelf-stable.
- YieldThe full quantity gives roughly 6 to 8 pints of thick relish.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1879, gathered recipes from some 250 contributing housekeepers, which is why the page carries two versions of the same thing signed only with initials — Mrs. S. T. and Mrs. P. Mc. Green tomato pickle is related to the family of American sweet-sour relishes often grouped under the name chow-chow, though it is not simply one of them, and its reason for existing is agricultural rather than culinary: the first hard frost of autumn kills the vines and leaves a crop of tomatoes that will never ripen. Mustard, allspice, cloves and a heavy dose of vinegar and brown sugar turn that loss into a condiment for the winter's salt pork, cold meats and beans. The near-identical spicing of the two recipes, differing chiefly in the salt, may suggest a formula circulating by word of mouth in the same neighborhoods rather than copied from print, though that remains speculation.