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California Chow-Chow
18 green tomatoes 8 cucumbers 5 dozen small green onions 1 pound green string-beans 1 cauliflower 1 bunch celery 3 chopped red peppers 1/2 cup salt 2 quarts vinegar 1 cup brown sugar 2 tablespoons turmeric powder 4 tablespoons mustard seed 1 tablespoon cloves 1 tablespoon pepper Dice the tomatoes, celery, and cucumbers, skin the onions and remove the tops, cut the beans in small pieces and separate the cauliflower into flowerets. Put all the vegetables, including the chopped red peppers, into an earthenware crock or bowl and sprinkle with the salt. Let stand twenty-four hours, then drain off the liquid. Heat the vinegar with the sugar and spices to the boiling-point, add the vegetables and cook until they are tender. Pack the pickles in clean, hot jars and seal.
A full-scale nineteenth-century pickling batch, sized for a household putting up winter stores. The proportions are sound; the sealing method is the part that has been superseded.
- YieldAs written this is a very large batch, filling well over a dozen pint jars. Scale it down if you want a single evening's work and a shelf's worth of jars; halving is the simplest cut, since the cauliflower and celery come as single units.
- Open-kettle sealingPacking hot pickles into hot jars and screwing on the lid was standard practice and is no longer considered reliable, because the seal is not verified and nothing sterilises the jar rim. Follow current tested guidance for a boiling-water bath, or skip canning entirely, refrigerate the jars and eat the chow-chow within a couple of months.
- Vinegar strengthUse cider or white vinegar labelled 5 percent acidity. Older household vinegar varied, and a weak vinegar in a batch this size gives a pickle that will not keep.
- The saltHalf a cup of salt here is a draw, not a seasoning; it pulls water out of the vegetables overnight and is mostly poured away. Use pickling or kosher salt, since iodised table salt clouds the brine and its anti-caking agents leave a haze.
- Whole spicesThe tablespoon of cloves and tablespoon of pepper are most likely whole cloves and whole peppercorns. Ground spice in this quantity would turn the syrup muddy and bitter; tie the cloves and pepper in muslin if you would rather not fish them out.
- Small green onionsThese are scallions or spring onions with small bulbs, trimmed of their tops as instructed. Pearl or boiling onions, peeled, work as a substitute and hold their shape better.
- "Cook until tender"Take this to mean five to ten minutes at a simmer after the vegetables go into the hot vinegar. The cauliflower and beans should still have bite; longer and the whole relish collapses into a soft yellow mash.
- VesselsThe overnight salting wants a crock, glass or stainless bowl. Vinegar and salt attack aluminium, copper and unlined iron, and the turmeric will stain a plastic bowl permanently.
- TurmericTwo tablespoons is what gives chow-chow its characteristic yellow. It stains hands, wooden spoons and countertops, so work with something you do not mind marking.