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Chili Sauce
1 pint condensed tomato 1/2 cup lemon juice 4 tablespoons brown sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon cloves 4 tablespoons grated onion Cook the condensed tomato slowly one-half hour. Add the grated onion, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and cook one-half hour longer. Then add the lemon juice. Canned tomatoes may be used instead of condensed tomatoes, in which case it will be necessary to use three pints. Cook them until reduced to one pint. Rub them through a colander, and proceed the same as above directed.
A sweet-spiced tomato condiment in the American nineteenth-century sense of "chili sauce" — there is no chili in it. The whole point is long, slow reduction, with the lemon juice held back to the very end.
- Condensed tomatoThis means tomato reduced to a thick purée, not the sweetened, salted, seasoned canned tomato soup sold today. Canned tomato purée or passata is the closest match; the recipe's own alternative — three pints of canned tomatoes boiled down to one — is the more reliable route.
- MeasuresA pint is 2 cups, so three pints of canned tomatoes is 6 cups, a little under two 28-oz cans, and you are reducing that to about 2 cups before the spicing begins.
- Add the lemon juice off the heatLemon juice last -- The recipe adds the half cup of lemon juice after the cooking is finished and gives it no further time on the stove; keeping it out of the long simmer preserves the fresh acidity that balances the brown sugar.
- Grated onionGrate on the coarse side of a box grater and use the juice as well as the pulp. Chopped onion will not dissolve into the sauce in half an hour and leaves a chunky texture the recipe does not intend.
- Watch the panA thick tomato purée over an hour of cooking scorches easily. Use a heavy-bottomed pan, keep the heat low, and stir down into the corners; a burnt note cannot be corrected later.
- No salt is listedThe recipe calls for none. If you want it, taste at the end and add in small increments; it does more for the balance here than extra sugar.
- Yield and storageAbout 1 1/2 to 2 cups. There are no canning instructions and none should be improvised: treat it as a fresh condiment, refrigerate in a covered jar, and use within a week or two.
- ServingA table sauce; it would suit croquettes, rice dishes and eggs, though the recipe itself says nothing about how it was meant to be served.
"Chili sauce" in American cookbooks of this era rarely meant anything hot. It was a tomato table sauce, close kin to ketchup, usually built from tomatoes, onion, spices and vinegar — often with sweet peppers — and cooked down for an hour or more. This version is unusual in using lemon juice in place of the more customary vinegar, which gives a rounder, fruitier acidity. If the source is a meatless cookbook, that is telling: vegetarian and economy books leaned on sauces, relishes and condiments to give savor and interest to dishes of beans, nuts, rice and eggs.