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Governor's Sauce
Mrs. Midgley.
Slice a peck of green tomatoes, sprinkle salt over them, say about a cupful, and let them stand one night; in the morning pour off the liquor, and put them in a kettle with vinegar enough to cover them, add six green or red peppers, (moderate size), four large onions chopped fine, one cup of brown sugar, one cup of scraped horse-radish, a tablespoonful of cloves, one of allspice, a teaspoonful of cayenne, one of white pepper; let it simmer till soft, put into jars and always keep it air tight.
A green tomato relish of the chow-chow family, scaled for a household putting up the last of the garden. The quantities are large but workable; the only real gap is that the original says nothing about processing the jars.
- A peck of tomatoesA peck is 8 dry quarts, which for sliced green tomatoes runs about 12 to 13 lb. Halving or quartering the whole recipe is sensible unless you want six or seven pints of relish.
- The salt draw is the hingeThe cup of salt and the overnight stand pull water out of the tomatoes; skip it and the finished sauce is thin and watery. Pour off the brine and do not rinse more than lightly, or you lose the seasoning along with the liquid.
- Vinegar strengthNineteenth-century cider vinegar varied widely. Use a commercial 5% acidity cider or white vinegar, enough to cover; how much that takes depends on the pan and on how much liquid the tomatoes gave up overnight.
- The peppers"Six green or red peppers, moderate size" most likely means the fresh sweet frying peppers of the period rather than chiles, particularly as the heat is supplied separately by the teaspoon of cayenne, though the recipe does not specify. Seed and chop them.
- SpicesThe recipe does not say whether the cloves and allspice are ground or whole. Ground cloves at a tablespoon will dominate; whole ones tied in muslin and lifted out give a cleaner result.
- Horseradish"Scraped" is fresh root grated on the fine side. Its bite fades with cooking and with time in the jar, so a full cup is not as aggressive as it sounds. Prepared horseradish in vinegar can substitute, drained.
- Simmer till softExpect 45 minutes to an hour of gentle simmering, uncovered, stirring often as it thickens; green tomatoes hold their shape stubbornly and the mixture scorches once it reduces.
- Storage"Always keep it air tight" is the whole of the processing advice this recipe gives. Pack hot into hot jars and either refrigerate and use within a couple of months, or follow a current tested boiling-water-bath schedule for pickled relish if you want it shelf stable.
- Yield and servingThe full batch fills roughly six to seven pint jars. It is a condiment for cold meat, boiled beef, pork and beans, or sausage, spooned out a tablespoon or two at a time.
Green tomato pickle was one of the standard answers to a problem every kitchen garden had: frost arriving before the fruit ripened. Salting the slices overnight, then cooking them down with vinegar, sugar, onion and spice, produced a sweet-sour relish in the chow-chow and piccalilli family that would keep through the winter. The horseradish and cayenne here push it toward the sharper end of that range. The attribution to a named contributor, Mrs. Midgley, is characteristic of the club and subscription compilations of the period, whose recipes were printed largely as submitted, with loose spice measurements and no processing instructions.