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Chili Sauce (II)
Mrs. E. H. Dennison.
To nine large ripe tomatoes and three green peppers, add one onion chopped fine, two cups of vinegar, two tablespoons of sugar, and one of salt; steam one hour, then add one teaspoon of ginger, one of allspice, and one of cloves.
A plain nineteenth-century tomato relish: fruit, vinegar, sugar, salt, and the three sweet spices added at the very end. The whole character of the sauce depends on cooking it down far enough and not spicing it too early.
- Add the spices last, and brieflyAdd the spices last -- Ginger, allspice and cloves go in after the hour of cooking; the recipe does not say how much longer to cook, and a few minutes is enough. Ground cloves can turn bitter and medicinal if boiled at length, and they will dominate the tomato if given the chance.
- "Steam one hour" means simmerIn this period "steam" often meant nothing more than a covered pot at a bare simmer over low heat. Leave the lid off or ajar for at least the second half hour, or the sauce will stay thin — you want it reduced to the consistency of a loose ketchup.
- Nine large ripe tomatoesRoughly 4 to 4 1/2 lb, or a little over 2 quarts chopped. Peel them first (30 seconds in boiling water, then cold), since the skins will not break down and end up as tough curls in the finished sauce.
- Green peppersThese are sweet bell peppers, not chilies. Despite the name, this style of chili sauce carried no heat beyond the onion and spice; add a fresh hot pepper if you want some, but it is a departure from the original.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar in this period varied widely in strength. Two cups of modern 5 percent cider vinegar is assertive; taste toward the end and balance with a little more sugar if it reads sharp.
- Yield and storageRoughly 4 to 5 cups, depending on how far it is reduced. The recipe gives no canning directions, so treat it as a fresh condiment: cool it, jar it, and keep it in the refrigerator, where it holds two to three weeks. For shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested tomato-relish procedure with measured acid and processing times.
- ServingGood with cold meat, chops, and fried fish, and useful anywhere a sweet-sour tomato relish would go. It improves after a day or two as the spices settle.
Chili sauce in American cookbooks of the 1870s and 1880s generally meant a spiced tomato relish rather than anything hot; the name appears to have followed the pepper and the tomato north from Mexico and Central America and attached itself, loosely, to tomato-and-vinegar preserves. The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago from contributions by named local women, which is why this version arrives credited to Mrs. E. H. Dennison and sits alongside a second, differently spiced Chili Sauce: the book preserves competing household formulas rather than settling on one. Recipes like this belonged to the late-summer glut, when tomatoes came in faster than a family could eat them and vinegar, sugar and a long spell on the back of the stove were a standard answer. Commercial bottled versions followed a similar template, and Heinz and its competitors were selling chili sauce by the bottle by the end of the century.