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Preserved Tomatoes
Procure eight pounds of perfectly sound green tomatoes and put them in a preserving-pan with the thinly-pared rind and strained juice of four or five lemons and two ounces of whole ginger. Place them over a brisk fire until tender, then put in eight pounds of coarsely-crushed loaf sugar and boil the whole quickly until thickly reduced, stirring it frequently and keeping it well-skimmed. When the preserve is sufficiently cooked, remove the ginger, turn it into jars, and when cold, tie over tightly for future use.
This is a British-style ginger preserve made with unripe tomatoes, written for a coal range and a copper pan. The proportions are sound; the vagueness is all in heat, timing and storage.
- The hinge: cook the fruit soft before the sugar goes inSugar sets the skins and they will never soften afterward. Simmer the tomatoes with the lemon rind, juice and ginger until they collapse and go translucent, then add the sugar.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined white cane sugar sold in a hard cone and broken up with nippers, which is why the recipe says coarsely crushed. Ordinary granulated sugar, weight for weight, is the same thing.
- Whole gingerThis means dried whole ginger root, not fresh. Bruise the pieces and tie them in a square of muslin so they can be lifted out cleanly at the end; two ounces is a strong, deliberately assertive amount.
- A brisk fireHigh heat throughout. Once the sugar is in, a fast rolling boil is what gives a clear preserve; a long slow one darkens it and dulls the ginger.
- Judging "thickly reduced"Take it to 220F/104C on a sugar thermometer, or test a spoonful on a chilled saucer, push it with a fingertip and look for a wrinkled skin. A batch this size will need a long hard boil; judge by the test rather than the clock.
- SkimmingThe scum is impurities and air driven up by the boil. Skim it as it rises rather than at the end, when it will have broken up and clouded the jars.
- The lemon rindPare it thinly enough that no white pith comes with it. Left in strips it can be fished out with the ginger, or chopped fine and left in for a marmalade character.
- StorageTying paper over the cold jars was the standard nineteenth-century seal and it is not enough today. Ladle boiling hot into sterilised jars and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes, or skip the canning and keep the jars in the refrigerator.
- YieldA very large batch, several times what a domestic cook is likely to want. Halving the recipe is sensible unless you have a genuinely large preserving pan, as the mixture rises considerably at the boil.
Green tomato preserve belongs to the thrifty end of nineteenth-century kitchen practice: at the close of the season a plant still carries fruit that will never ripen, and the unripe tomato, firm and tart, behaves more like a cooking apple than a salad vegetable. Pairing it with dried ginger and lemon sits alongside the older English tradition of ginger preserves and marrow-and-ginger jam, in which a bland or neutral fruit is used chiefly as a body to carry the spice. Its appearance in Oscar Tschirky's 1896 volume is a reminder that the Waldorf's kitchen was not solely a place of terrapin and champagne sauces; a hotel of that scale kept its own store of preserves, pickles and conserves.