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Dutch Chow-Chow
Two quarts of green tomatoes; one quart of white onions; four green peppers (large) and one large head of cauliflower. Chop all very fine with the exception of the cauliflower. Separate the cauliflower into flowerets, pour over these pieces boiling water and let stand for ten minutes. Drain off the water, and pour over the cauliflower a brine made of four quarts of water and one pint salt. Let this stand over night. In the morning drain off all the water, taking pains to drain very dry. Take one cup sifted flour, six tablespoons ground mustard, one teaspoon turmeric powder, and enough cold vinegar to make a stiff paste. Add to this one cup of sugar and two quarts of vinegar. Boil this mixture until it thickens, being careful that it does not burn. It must be kept smooth by constant stirring. When smooth and thick add the vegetables and cook until they are tender.
A mustard-thickened green tomato pickle of the piccalilli family. The method is sound, but the original leaves out two things a modern cook needs: how the vegetables other than the cauliflower are salted, and what to do with the finished chow-chow.
- The brine instruction is incompleteAs written, only the cauliflower is brined overnight, yet the chopped tomatoes, onions and peppers arguably need the same treatment or the finished pickle will be watery and bland. Many mixed-pickle recipes salt all the chopped vegetables overnight and drain them well; the four quarts water to one pint salt brine is strong enough for the whole batch.
- That is a very heavy brineA pint of salt to four quarts of water works out at roughly 10 to 15 percent depending on how fine the salt is. Draining "very dry" matters, and a quick rinse before cooking is worth considering if you are sensitive to salt, since no further seasoning is added.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar in 1911 varied; buy plain distilled white or cider vinegar labelled 5 percent acidity. Do not dilute it, and do not substitute a low-acid wine vinegar, since the vinegar is the only thing preserving the finished pickle.
- Making the paste smoothMix the flour, mustard and turmeric with cold vinegar to a stiff paste first, exactly as written, then loosen it gradually with the remaining two quarts. Adding the bulk vinegar all at once gives lumps that no amount of stirring will clear.
- Watch the bottom of the panA cup of flour in two quarts of vinegar scorches readily. Use a heavy non-reactive pan, keep the heat moderate, and stir across the base rather than around the sides. Aluminium and bare cast iron react with vinegar and will darken the sauce.
- Cooking the vegetables"Until they are tender" is about 10 to 15 minutes once the vegetables go in. Green tomatoes and onions soften quickly; stop while the cauliflower still has some bite, as it goes on softening in the jar.
- Storage, not canningFlour-thickened pickles are too dense for heat to penetrate reliably, so this is not a candidate for water-bath processing. Pack it hot into clean jars, cool, and keep it in the refrigerator, where it will hold for a couple of months. If you want a shelf-stable chow-chow, use a tested current recipe with no flour in it.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; expect several quarts, since two quarts of vinegar are added to roughly four to five quarts of prepared vegetables. It improves after a week.
Chow-chow is the American name for a mustard-and-turmeric mixed pickle, and the word is generally traced to the Chinese pidgin term for an assortment or mixture, carried into English through the nineteenth-century China trade. The "Dutch" in this title most likely means Pennsylvania Dutch, from Deutsch rather than Holland, and the recipe sits comfortably in that tradition: green tomatoes and cauliflower held in strong brine overnight, then bound in a thick yellow mustard sauce. Green tomatoes were the point. A kitchen garden could end the season with fruit that would never ripen, and pickling it in a flour-thickened mustard was one common way to convert a frost warning into winter relish. The Butterick Cook Book was issued by a pattern company selling domestic competence along with its dress patterns.