Home › Pickles and Relishes › Dixie Relish
Dixie Relish
3 or 4 whole red peppers
1 pint white onions
1 pint chopped sweet green
2 tablespoons salt peppers
4 tablespoons mustard seed
1 pint chopped sweet red
2 tablespoons celery seed peppers
¾ cup sugar
1 quart chopped cabbage
1 quart vinegar
Soak green and red peppers in brine for twenty-four hours, using one cup salt to one gallon water. Take from the brine and freshen in clear, cold water, from one to two hours. Drain well, cut open, remove seeds and white sections, and chop the peppers. Put cabbage and onions through the food-chopper separately and measure before mixing. Add chopped cabbage and onions to chopped peppers. Add salt, spices, sugar and vinegar. Let the mixture stand overnight in a covered crock or enameled vessel. Drain, and heat the liquid. When hot add the other ingredients and cook for ten minutes. Seal in clean, hot jars.
The ingredient list has been scrambled by the book's two-column setting, and the canning method is the part that has not survived a century of food-safety work. Read the notes before shopping.
- Why it fails as writtenThe relish is packed hot into jars and simply sealed, with no processing time in a boiling-water canner and no test of the finished acidity. Open-kettle sealing was standard practice in 1911 and is no longer considered a reliable seal: it leaves headspace air, unsterilised lid surfaces and no way to know the jars ever reached and held a killing temperature. Mould and yeast spoilage in vegetable relishes put up this way is well documented.
- The acid is not measuredVinegar in 1911 was sold at variable strength and was often homemade cider vinegar. A safe acidified pickle depends on knowing the vinegar is at least 5 per cent acetic acid and on a fixed vinegar-to-vegetable ratio; neither is established here. Use a current tested relish recipe if you want shelf-stable jars.
- The salt brineOne cup of salt to one gallon of water is roughly a 6 to 7 per cent brine, used here only to firm and season the peppers over twenty-four hours. It is a holding brine, not a preserving cure, and it does nothing for the safety of the sealed jars.
- The garbled ingredient listSet straight, it reads: 3 or 4 whole red peppers; 1 pint white onions; 1 pint chopped sweet green peppers; 1 pint chopped sweet red peppers; 1 quart chopped cabbage; 2 tablespoons salt; 4 tablespoons mustard seed; 2 tablespoons celery seed; three-quarters cup sugar; 1 quart vinegar.
- MeasuresA pint is two cups and a quart four; the book means volume of already-chopped vegetable, which is why it tells you to put cabbage and onions through the chopper separately and measure afterwards. "White onions" may mean the small boiling onions rather than the modern large white variety, though the book does not say.
- The whole red peppersThe three or four whole red peppers are listed apart from the sweet peppers, and the sweet ones are called out as sweet every time they appear, which suggests these are hot peppers; a long red chilli is the likely intention.
- Food-chopperA hand-cranked food chopper produces a coarse, uneven mince and drains freely. A food processor pulsed a few times comes closest; run continuously it turns cabbage to slush and the relish will not drain.
"Dixie relish" is a sweet-sour cabbage, onion and sweet-pepper relish of the chow-chow family, generally traced to Southern home canning. The Butterick company, better known for dress patterns, published household compilations like this one for the same audience that bought its magazines, and its pickle chapter reflects the moment when the home kitchen and the factory were competing for the same shelf. Recipes of this stripe depend on mustard seed and celery seed rather than a ground spice mixture, which keeps the brine clear instead of clouding it, a point of canning instruction, where the look of the jar mattered as much as the taste.