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Green Tomato Pickles
Select fully-grown green tomatoes just before they begin to open, slice them and put them in layers in large jars, strewing plenty of salt over each layer. Allow them to remain for ten or twelve hours, then put them in a preserving-pan, adding for every five pounds of tomatoes one pound of brown sugar, one-half pound of sliced small onions, two sliced green pepper pods, one teaspoonful each of peppercorns and cloves, half a stick of cinnamon and one-fourth teaspoonful each of cayenne pepper, also one quart of vinegar. Drain the tomatoes, put them in with the above ingredients and allow the whole to simmer gently at the side of the fire. When the tomatoes are tender turn them with the pickling ingredients into jars, leave them cold, and then paste stout paper over the top of each jar. The pickle will be better preserved if the jars are small. Pack them away for use in a cool, dry store-cupboard. This forms an excellent relish for cold meat or cheese.
A straightforward end-of-season vinegar pickle, but the original assumes a coal range and a paper-capped jar in a cool larder. A few adjustments make it work in a modern kitchen.
- The salting step is the hingeTen to twelve hours under plenty of salt draws out the water that would otherwise dilute the vinegar and turn the slices to mush. Drain well and discard the brine rather than adding it to the pan; do not rinse unless the tomatoes taste aggressively salty.
- "Simmer at the side of the fire"On a wood or coal range the cooler edge of the top plate held a pan at a bare tremble. Use the lowest burner setting or a heat diffuser, aiming for around 180-190F with only occasional bubbles. A rolling boil breaks the slices apart.
- Preserving-panA wide, heavy pan; in this period often copper or brass, though tin-lined and enamelled iron pans were also sold as preserving-pans. Use stainless steel or enamelled cast iron; unlined copper and bare aluminium react badly with vinegar and salt.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar in 1896 varied considerably. Use a standard 5 percent cider or white vinegar so the finished pickle is reliably acidic; nothing labelled "reduced acidity" and no homemade vinegar of unknown strength.
- Green pepper podsAmbiguous in the original. In an American kitchen of this period it most likely means two small green bell or frying peppers, not hot chiles, especially since cayenne is added separately. The cayenne line is garbled in the printed text; a quarter teaspoon is the sensible reading.
- The paper sealPaper pasted over the top excluded dust and slowed evaporation, but it is not an airtight seal and it will not keep the jars safe on a shelf. Fill clean jars, cool, cap tightly and keep them in the refrigerator, where the pickle will hold for a couple of months. For genuine pantry storage, follow a current tested water-bath canning process rather than this one.
- SpicesWhole peppercorns, cloves and a piece of cinnamon stick are meant to be left in. If you would rather not bite into a clove, tie them in a muslin bag and lift it out before jarring.
- Yield and servingFive pounds of tomatoes with the onions and liquid makes a substantial batch, well over the two pints of vinegar it starts with; the recipe's own advice to use small jars is worth following. As the recipe says, it is a relish for cold meat and cheese; it also suits a ham sandwich or a plate of sausages.
Green tomato pickle was a thrift dish before it was a delicacy: the fruit that would never ripen before frost got sliced, salted and put down in vinegar and brown sugar, a sweet-sour treatment of the kind found in the British chutneys and "sweet pickles" widely made in nineteenth-century America. Its appearance in Oscar Tschirky's 1896 collection is a reminder that the man remembered for the Waldorf salad was running a hotel kitchen that still put up its own relishes; the book moves without embarrassment between grand restaurant service and household work of exactly this kind. The instruction to "simmer gently at the side of the fire" and to paste stout paper over each jar places the text in the era of the coal range and the cool store-cupboard, before home canning had been standardised around measured processing times.