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Green-Tomato Preserve
8 pounds green tomatoes 6 pounds sugar 1 tablespoon preserved ginger 6 lemons Wash the tomatoes, remove any dark parts about the stems, and weigh them. Cover them with boiling water, let them stand five minutes, drain and slice them into a preserving-kettle, placing a layer of the tomatoes, then a layer of sliced lemon, then the sugar with the ginger sprinkled over it. Let the mixture stand overnight. Drain and boil the sirup for ten minutes. Skim, add the tomatoes and cook rapidly until they are clear. Pour into clean, hot jars and seal.
A straightforward two-day preserve: macerate overnight, boil the drawn syrup, then finish the fruit in it. The only technical demand is knowing when to stop cooking.
- Cook to "clear," not to a clockThe tomato slices are done when they turn translucent and glossy and the syrup has visibly thickened; the recipe gives no temperature, and the usual jelly point of about 220F is at best a rough guide here. Pushing past that point gives a stiff, caramel-tinged preserve; stopping short leaves slices that float in thin syrup.
- Preserved gingerThis is ginger root candied in heavy syrup, sold in jars; crystallized ginger is a close relation. The recipe does not say whether to chop it, though chopping fine distributes it better. Fresh ginger is not the same thing, being neither sweetened nor softened, and is not a like-for-like substitute.
- Choose the right tomatoesHard, fully green fruit with no blush of pink. Anything ripening has softened pectin-poor flesh and will collapse into pulp instead of holding as slices.
- Lemons go in whole, slicedPeel, pith and all, sliced thin and seeded. They supply the acid and most of the set, so do not substitute bottled juice; six lemons is roughly 1 1/2 lb of fruit.
- The preserving-kettleA wide, heavy pot big enough to hold the fruit and sugar with room to boil hard. Enamel or stainless is the safe modern choice, since the lemon and tomato acid is reactive with bare aluminum or iron.
- "Sirup" and the overnight standSirup is simply syrup. The overnight rest draws liquid from the tomatoes by osmosis; the drained liquid is what gets boiled ten minutes and skimmed before the fruit rejoins it.
- Sealing"Pour into clean, hot jars and seal" describes open-kettle canning, which is no longer considered a sound seal. Fill modern jars and process them in a boiling-water bath according to current tested guidance, or simply refrigerate the finished preserve and use it within a few weeks.
- YieldThis is a large batch: eight pounds of tomatoes with six of sugar will fill something on the order of ten to twelve pints, depending on how far the syrup is reduced.