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Catsup
3 T whole cloves 3 sticks cinnamon 4 T mixed spices Mrs. Lester.
Cook all together, let stand three hours, then strain. Add 3 C vinegar 3 C sugar Cook until it thickens. 3 T salt 1 t red pepper Louise Wehrenberg. 1 head cauliflower 1 C cucumber 1 C onion 4 green tomatoes
As printed, this page has collapsed two contributors' recipes into one block, and the main ingredient of the catsup itself has dropped out. Read it as a spiced vinegar syrup plus a separate chopped-vegetable relish, and work out the proportions before you start.
- The text is scrambledMrs. Lester's spice-and-vinegar cooking method has been run together with Louise Wehrenberg's vegetable list, and the salt and red pepper float between them. Compositors' errors of this kind are common in community cookbooks; whatever the cause, treat this as two fragments rather than one set of instructions.
- The missing baseA catsup built on 3 cups vinegar and 3 cups sugar would need a quantity of pulped fruit or vegetable to become catsup rather than syrup, and no such ingredient is printed. Tomatoes are a likely base; grapes, plums and gooseberries also appear as catsups in collections of this period.
- T and CT is a tablespoon, t a teaspoon, C a cup. Three tablespoons of whole cloves and four of mixed spices is a heavy hand, which is one more sign that ingredients or quantities have gone missing from the printed text.
- Mixed spicesThis was a shop or household blend, typically of allspice, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and mustard seed in varying proportions, broadly comparable to modern pickling spice. Given the whole cloves and cinnamon sticks alongside it, whole spice is the likely intention.
- Steeping and strainingThe spices are cooked, then left to stand three hours before straining, so the infusion continues off the heat. Tying the spices in muslin makes the straining a matter of lifting them out.
- Red pepperA teaspoon of red pepper here means dried cayenne, not paprika or crushed flakes. It is a full teaspoon for a large batch and will read as sharp in a small one.
- "Cook until it thickens"With a sugar and vinegar mixture this means reducing at a bare simmer, uncovered, until a spoonful drawn across a cold plate holds a line. Rushed at a boil it scorches, and the sugar caramelises before the water is gone.
- The relish listCauliflower, cucumber, onion and green tomatoes read like the makings of a chow-chow, with the spiced vinegar poured over them. No preparation is printed for them at all; recipes of this type usually chop the vegetables and salt them before draining.
- StoringNo sealing or processing instructions survive on this page. Keep whatever you make in the refrigerator and use it within a few weeks; a current tested recipe is the place to go for shelf-stable jars.
Homemade catsup in an American community cookbook of this period is a broad family, not a single sauce: tomato, walnut, mushroom, grape, currant and cucumber catsups all sat under the heading, most of them thin spiced condiments meant to be shaken over meat. The word is usually traced to a Chinese or Malay term for a fermented fish or shellfish sauce -- ke-tsiap, kicap -- which entered English by the end of the seventeenth century, though the details of the borrowing are disputed; tomatoes attached themselves to it much later. The chow-chow of cauliflower, cucumber, onion and green tomatoes points to end-of-season cooking, when the tomatoes left on the vine were not going to ripen. Both recipes here carry a contributor's name, which is part of the point of a book like this.