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Tomato Catsup (Half bushel tomatoes four)
Half bushel tomatoes, four ounces salt, three ounces ground black pepper, one ounce cinnamon, half ounce ground cloves, one drachm cayenne pepper, one gallon vinegar; slice the tomatoes and stew in their own liquor until soft, and rub through a sieve fine enough to retain the seeds; boil the pulp and juice down to the consistency of apple-butter (very thick), stirring steadily all the time to prevent burning; then add the vinegar with which a small tea-cup sugar and the spices have been mixed, boil up twice, remove from fire, let cool and bottle. Those who like the flavor of onions may add about half a dozen medium-sized ones, peeled and sliced, fifteen minutes before the vinegar and spices are put in. -Mrs. M. M. Munsell, Delaware,
A full-scale nineteenth-century preserving recipe, written for a household putting up a season's worth at once. Everything about it works at a quarter scale except the patience it demands.
- Half a bushel of tomatoesA bushel of tomatoes runs about 53 lb, so this calls for roughly 26-28 lb. Quartering the recipe gives about 7 lb of tomatoes, 1 oz salt, 3/4 oz black pepper, 1/4 oz cinnamon, a scant 1/8 oz cloves, a pinch of cayenne and 1 quart vinegar.
- A drachmAn apothecaries' drachm is 1/8 ounce, about two teaspoons of ground cayenne. At full scale that is mild heat spread across several quarts.
- The sugar is missing from the listThe ingredient line gives no sugar, but the method calls for "a small tea-cup" mixed into the vinegar. A small teacup here is on the order of 1/2 to 2/3 cup; treat it as seasoning to taste rather than a fixed quantity.
- The spicing is heavier than it looksThree ounces of ground black pepper is about three-quarters of a cup, and it is meant to carry a very large batch. Measure by weight when scaling down; a scoop of ground pepper varies wildly by volume.
- The reduction is the whole jobCooking the sieved pulp down to the thickness of apple butter takes hours in a wide, heavy pan, and it will scorch the moment it is left alone. Constant stirring is not rhetorical, and the last stage is where the pot spits.
- Why the vinegar goes in lastLong boiling drives off acetic acid and dulls the spices. Adding the vinegar and spices at the end, then boiling up briefly, keeps both sharp. Modern vinegar is standardised at about 5 percent acidity; home-made and period cider vinegar varied in strength.
- SievingA sieve fine enough to hold back the seeds also holds back the skins, which is the point. A food mill with the fine plate does the same work faster than a wooden spoon and a colander.
- Bottling and storage"Let cool and bottle" reflects a period expectation that vinegar and spice alone would keep it in a cool cellar. Fill hot jars and refrigerate, or process by a current tested water-bath method; do not count on cool bottling for shelf storage.
- YieldThe original gives none. Expect at least five quarts from the full batch -- the gallon of vinegar alone is four -- and upwards of a quart from the quarter recipe, depending on how far the pulp is reduced.
Catsup reached English kitchens as a thin, dark, keeping sauce, the name generally traced through Malay kecap to a Hokkien term for fermented fish brine, and for a century it was made chiefly from mushrooms, walnuts and oysters. Tomato versions took hold in the United States in the early nineteenth century and by the 1880s, when The Dixie Cook Book was assembled from contributed recipes like this one from Mrs. Munsell of Delaware, tomato catsup had become the default and the others the specialty. What distinguishes this version from the bottled sauce on a modern table is the balance: thick, heavily spiced with black pepper and clove, only lightly sweetened, and preserved as much by vinegar as by sugar. Commercial catsup grew markedly sweeter over the following decades, in part because sugar and a smoother texture sold better, and in part because canners under pressure from early food-purity campaigns wanted formulas that kept without benzoate preservatives.