S. C
Tomato Catsup.
Put into a preserving kettle about one pint water, fill up the kettle with ripe red tomatoes, previously washed and picked, with the skins on, cover closely, and set on a hot fire; frequently stirring that they may not stick to the bottom. Boil about one hour. Turn into a wooden tray; when cool enough, rub through a coarse sieve, through which neither skin nor seed can pass. Measure five quarts of this pulp, and boil until very thick, then add two tablespoonfuls horseradish, two tablespoonfuls white mustard-seed, two tablespoonfuls celery-seed, two tablespoonfuls black pepper beaten fine, two or three races of ginger beaten fine, three or four onions chopped fine, a little garlic, one nutmeg, salt and sugar to the taste. Stir all in, and let it come to a boil. Pour in one quart strong cider vinegar. Let it boil up once more, and take off the fire. Bottle, cork, and seal.--Mrs. S. T.
A long-boiled, whole-spice catsup of the sort made by the bushel in late summer. Nothing here is difficult, but the quantities are large and several of the terms have drifted.
- Scale firstFive quarts of sieved pulp takes something on the order of 20 to 30 lb of ripe tomatoes, and will probably reduce to two or three quarts of finished catsup. Quartering the whole recipe gives a manageable batch.
- Preserving kettleBy the 1870s this could be a wide, heavy brass or copper pan, though porcelain-lined and granite-ware kettles were sold under the same name. Use stainless steel or enamelled cast iron; long contact between hot acid and bare copper is not something to repeat.
- Races of gingerA race is a root or hand of fresh ginger. Two or three means a few thumb-sized knobs, pounded — not dried ground ginger, which behaves differently in a long boil.
- Whole spicesMustard seed, celery seed and pounded pepper left loose give a gritty, speckled sauce. Tying them in muslin and lifting the bag out before bottling produces the flavour without the texture.
- "A little garlic" and "to the taste"Genuinely unmeasured. One or two cloves suits this volume; for salt and sugar, start at about a tablespoon of salt and a quarter cup of sugar per five quarts of pulp and correct after the vinegar goes in, since vinegar sharpens both.
- The boiling down is the work"Boil until very thick" on five quarts of thin pulp means hours over moderate heat, stirred often. Reduce before the vinegar is added, as the original directs — vinegar boiled hard for a long stretch loses its edge.
- No peeling neededSkins and seeds go into the first boil and are caught by the sieve afterwards, which is why the sieve must be fine enough that "neither skin nor seed can pass." A food mill does the same job faster.
- Bottle, cork and sealThis is 19th-century storage, not modern preservation. Treat the finished catsup as a refrigerator condiment, or follow a current tested water-bath process for tomato catsup if it is to be kept in the pantry.
Catsup began as a class of thin, keeping sauces rather than a single product: the word is generally traced to a Hokkien term for a fermented fish brine, and English cooks applied it through the 18th century to mushroom, walnut and oyster liquors, all of them dark, salty and used as seasoning. Tomato catsup arrives later, in American receipt books of the early 1800s, and by the time Housekeeping in Old Virginia was collected in 1878 it had become a standard late-summer chore in any household with a productive garden — note that the sauce here still tastes of horseradish, celery seed, ginger and nutmeg as much as of tomato, and that the sugar is a seasoning "to the taste" rather than the dominant note it became in factory-bottled ketchup. The recipe's signature, "Mrs. S. T.", reflects the book's method: Marion Cabell Tyree assembled it from contributions by named and initialled Virginia housekeepers, so the same book can offer several competing catsups.