Chili Sauce No. 1

This is a turn-of-the-century open-kettle preserve, and that is the part that has not survived. The seasoning is sound; the sealing method is not.

• Open-kettle sealing"Put in jar and seal tight" means ladling hot sauce into jars and trusting the cooling contents to pull a seal. No modern canning authority accepts this for a vegetable relish: the jar rim, the lid and the headspace are never brought to a reliable temperature, and the vacuum that forms is unpredictable. Anything sealed this way can harbor Clostridium botulinum spores in an oxygen-free jar at room temperature.
• The acidity is unverifiedTomatoes sit close to the pH threshold that keeps botulinum spores dormant, and some varieties test above it, which is why current guidance is to add measured acid. The four onions and three peppers are low-acid vegetables that raise the pH further, and "1/2 peck" of tomatoes is not a fixed weight, so the ratio of vinegar to produce cannot be pinned down. Without a measured acid level there is no way to know this batch is safe to store.
• No processing time or temperature"Boil all together until thick" is a cooking instruction, not a process. There is no jar-sterilization step, no headspace, no boiling-water-bath time, and no check that the seal held. Use a current tested chili sauce or tomato relish recipe if you want jars for the pantry.
• Half a peckA peck is a quarter of a bushel, roughly 12 to 13 lb of tomatoes, so half a peck is about 6 lb — somewhere around 15 to 18 medium tomatoes. This is worth knowing chiefly because it shows how loose the original proportions are.
• Pods of green pepper"Pods" here means whole peppers, and in relishes of this kind green sweet peppers rather than hot ones are the likely intent, though the recipe does not specify. Chili sauce of this era is not a hot sauce whatever the origin of the name.
• The spice bagSpices tied in cheesecloth so they can be lifted out is a common device in relishes of this period; the teaspoon measures here read as ground, which will cloud and darken the sauce if left loose. If you cook a small batch of this seasoning simply to eat within a week or two in the refrigerator, use whole spices in the bag and pull it once the flavor is where you want it.
• What it should taste likeThick enough to mound on a spoon, sharply vinegary, sweet only in the background — four tablespoons of brown sugar against four cups of vinegar is a much leaner balance than most bottled chili sauce sold now.