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Ripe Tomato Preserves (Select a half peck of nice)
Select a half peck of nice, smooth tomatoes not overripe, scald, peel and weigh. To each pound allow one pound of sugar, juice and rind of half a lemon, and a small piece of ginger root cut into thin slices. Put all this in a porcelain kettle and cook gently three hours. The tomatoes should not lose their shape but should be clear and tender. Put them into tumblers or jars and stand away to cool. When cold, tie as directed in the preceding recipe. Yellow tomatoes may be preserved in the same manner.
A straight equal-weight fruit preserve, with tomatoes standing in for the usual plums or figs. The only real difficulties are the archaic measures and the storage method, which has been superseded.
- Half a peckA peck is a quarter bushel, or 8 dry quarts, so half a peck is 4 dry quarts. A bushel of tomatoes is usually reckoned at around 50 lb, which puts half a peck at roughly 6-7 lb of whole fruit; expect perhaps 5-6 lb once peeled, matched with the same weight of sugar.
- Choose the right tomatoSmall, firm, thick-walled fruit holds its shape through three hours of simmering. Plum or paste types, or small yellow tomatoes, work far better than large slicers, which collapse into pulp.
- Porcelain kettleThis means an enamelled cast-iron or vitrified pot, chosen because bare copper, iron and tin react with acidic fruit and discolour it. A heavy stainless or enamelled preserving pan is the modern equivalent.
- PeelingScalding means 30-60 seconds in boiling water, then straight into cold; the skins slip off. Score a shallow cross in the blossom end first if the skins are stubborn.
- Three hours, gentlyThis is not a rolling boil. The point is to draw sugar into the fruit slowly so the tomatoes turn translucent rather than breaking up, and the syrup thickens by evaporation. Keep it at a bare simmer, stir rarely, and skim.
- Ginger rootEither fresh root, peeled and sliced thin, or the whole dried root often meant by nineteenth-century recipes; the recipe specifies only 'a small piece'. A thumb-sized piece per few pounds of fruit is a reasonable reading. Fish the slices out before potting if you would rather not bite into them.
- Tumblers and tyingNineteenth-century preserves were poured into drinking glasses or open jars and covered with paper or cloth tied down, sometimes sealed with melted wax. That is not a safe shelf-stable seal by current standards. Treat this as a refrigerator preserve, or follow a current tested tomato preserve recipe with specified added acid and processing time if you want it in the cupboard.
- YieldThe full half-peck still makes a good deal, on the order of 5-6 pint jars. Scaling to 2 lb of tomatoes and 2 lb of sugar gives a manageable batch; watch the fruit rather than the clock, as a smaller quantity will reach the clear, tender stage sooner than three hours.
Sweet tomato preserves were commonplace in American cookbooks from the mid-nineteenth century onward, when the tomato was still handled as often like a fruit as like a vegetable - candied, preserved in syrup, made into marmalade and sweet pickle. The pairing with lemon and ginger is the standard nineteenth-century preserving trio: lemon supplies acid and pectin from the rind, ginger supplies warmth and, by tradition, aids digestion. Recipes of this kind appear in vegetable cookery books because the tomato sat awkwardly between categories, and because a household with a heavy late-summer crop needed every method available to use it up before frost. The instruction to pour the finished preserve into tumblers is a reminder of how preserving worked before the general adoption of screw-band jars: fruit was protected chiefly by its own sugar, with paper, cloth or wax over the top to keep out dust and mould.