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Chili Sauce
Mrs. H. Baird.
Twelve large ripe tomatoes, six green peppers, one large onion, all chopped fine, one tablespoon salt, one teaspoon ginger, one of cinnamon, one of allspice, one of cloves, one tablespoon sugar, two cups vinegar; boil thick.
A plain nineteenth-century tomato relish of the sort put up by the quart every September. The instructions amount to two words, "boil thick," so the judgment is all in the reduction and the storage.
- What "boil thick" meansSimmer uncovered, stirring often, until a spoon drawn through the pan leaves a track that closes slowly rather than instantly — roughly 1 to 2 hours for this quantity, depending on the width of the pan and how juicy the tomatoes are. Undercooked chili sauce separates into watery liquid and pulp in the jar.
- Green peppers are not chiliesIn American cookbooks of this era "green peppers" usually means unripe sweet bell peppers rather than hot chilies. Such warmth as the sauce has comes from the ginger, cloves and allspice rather than from capsicum; six sweet peppers makes a mild sauce.
- The tomatoesTwelve large ripe tomatoes is somewhere in the region of 4 to 6 lb, or roughly 3 quarts once chopped. Peel them — drop in boiling water for 30 seconds and slip the skins — or the finished sauce will be full of curled bits of skin.
- SpicesGinger, cinnamon, allspice and cloves are all meant as ground spices, added at the start. A teaspoon of cloves in this volume is assertive; halve it if you want the tomato forward.
- Vinegar strengthPeriod cider vinegar varied; use a modern vinegar labelled 5 percent acidity. Do not dilute it, since the acid is doing most of the preservative work here alongside the salt and sugar.
- YieldAbout 3 to 6 cups after reduction — two or three pint jars, depending on how far you take it.
- StorageThe recipe stops at the boiling and says nothing about putting it up. Treat it as a refrigerator condiment, good for a few weeks in a clean covered jar, or freeze it. Shelf-stable canning requires a current tested process with measured acidity and processing time, which this recipe does not supply.
Chili sauce in nineteenth-century American home cookery meant a spiced, vinegared tomato relish rather than anything hot — a close cousin of tomato catsup, distinguished mainly by being left chunky instead of strained smooth. It belongs to the late-summer preserving week, when a household processed tomatoes in bulk before frost and turned the surplus into catsup, chili sauce, piccalilli and chow-chow, all built on the same logic of vinegar, salt, sugar and warm spices. The attribution to Mrs. H. Baird is typical of the community-subscription cookbook, in which each contributor's name stood as the guarantee of the recipe.