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English Sauce
Mrs. Snider.
One pound brown sugar, half-pound salt, half-pound garlic, half-pound onions, quarter-pound pepper, quarterpound ground ginger, half-pound mustard seed, one pound raisins, two pounds apples, half-ounce cayenne, two quarts vinegar. The raisins to be chopped, apples to be peeled and cut and boiled in one pint of the vinegar; garlic and onions must be chopped fine and well bruised; the sugar made into a syrup with one pint of the vinegar. When the apples are cool, mix the whole, including the remainder of the vinegar; blend well together and jar.
This is a chutney in the Anglo-Indian manner, scaled for a household that expected to fill several quart jars and draw on them all winter. The proportions are by weight throughout, and they are aggressive by modern standards.
- YieldThe finished quantity is roughly a gallon — eight to ten pints. Quarter the recipe unless you genuinely want a year's supply.
- The seasonings are enormousA quarter-pound of ground pepper is about a cup, and half an ounce of cayenne is roughly two to three tablespoons. Half a pound of garlic is four or five large heads. These are not typos, but they produce a condiment meant to be used by the teaspoon; taste and scale back if you want something spreadable.
- Vinegar strengthNineteenth-century household vinegar varied widely in acidity. Use standard 5% cider or malt vinegar, which is what keeps this sauce safe and stable.
- "Well bruised"Bruising means pounding the chopped garlic and onion in a mortar until the cell walls break down and the juices run. A food processor does the same work; the point is to release the volatiles rather than leave distinct pieces.
- Mustard seedLeft whole, as written. Yellow or brown seed both work — brown is hotter. Whole seed softens over weeks in the vinegar and gives the sauce its texture.
- ApplesThe recipe does not say whether the two pounds is weighed before or after peeling and coring; before is the safer assumption. Any firm cooking apple will do; they should break down almost to a purée in the pint of vinegar.
- Let it sitMixed and jarred straight away, this tastes harsh and raw. Chutneys of this type need at least three or four weeks in a cool dark place for the pepper, garlic and mustard to mellow into one another.
- StorageThe sugar, salt and vinegar load is high, but nothing here is heat-processed in the jar. Keep it refrigerated and use clean spoons; discard anything that shows mould on the surface rather than skimming it.
"English sauce" in a Victorian North American cookbook often meant a bottled or jarred table condiment in the London style — the family of sweet-sour spiced relishes that reached Britain from India from the late eighteenth century onward and were commercialised as "chutney" and "sauce" by firms such as Crosse & Blackwell. The structure here follows that pattern: dried fruit, alliums, mustard seed, ginger, cayenne, sugar and a great deal of vinegar, with apples in place of the mangoes a Canadian cook would not have had to hand. The Home Cook Book was compiled in Toronto in the 1870s from contributions by named local women, which is why the recipe carries Mrs. Snider's name and little method beyond the essentials.