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Piccalilli
Mrs. Lamkin.
One peck of green tomatoes; (if the flavour of onions is desired, take eight, but it is very nice without any), four green peppers; slice all, and put in layers, sprinkle on one cup of salt, and let them remain over night; in the morning press dry through a sieve, put it in a porcelain kettle and cover with vinegar; add one cup of sugar, a tablespoon of each kind of spice; put into a muslin bag; stew slowly about an hour, or until the tomatoes are as soft as you desire.
A green-tomato piccalilli of the plainest sort: salt overnight, then a slow stew in sweetened spiced vinegar. Two things in the original need translating before you start — the peck and the spice bag.
- A peck of green tomatoesA peck is 8 dry quarts, which works out to roughly 12–13 lb of green tomatoes. That fills a large stockpot; halve everything if you want a manageable batch.
- Green tomatoes, not unripe red onesThese are firm, fully grown, still-hard fruit — the point is the acidity and the flesh that holds its shape. Tomatoes just beginning to blush will collapse into sauce.
- The cup of saltOne cup against 12 lb of vegetables is there to draw water out, not to season, and most of it leaves with the liquid. Use coarse pickling or kosher salt; iodized table salt is often said to cloud the brine.
- "Press dry through a sieve"Drain in a colander and press with the back of a spoon or a plate — you are expelling water, not puréeing. Do not rinse unless you want a distinctly milder pickle, since some salt is meant to stay behind.
- Porcelain kettleThis means an enamelled or otherwise non-reactive pan. Vinegar in bare cast iron, aluminium or unlined copper takes on a metallic taste and grey colour.
- "A tablespoon of each kind of spice"Genuinely unspecified. A combination often seen in nineteenth-century piccalilli is mustard seed, whole allspice, whole cloves, black peppercorns, celery seed and a piece of cinnamon; a tablespoon of each in a muslin bag suits the full peck. Whole spices only — ground ones will not come out again.
- VinegarUse standard 5 percent cider or white vinegar, enough to cover. Anything weaker will not preserve, and homemade vinegar of unknown strength is not worth the risk here.
- The hour of stewingSimmer gently and uncovered so the liquid reduces and thickens slightly; a hard boil turns the slices to mush. Taste at 40 minutes — "as soft as you desire" is the real instruction.
- Yield and keepingA full peck gives roughly 6–7 pints. The original gives no canning process, so treat it as a refrigerator pickle: pack into clean jars, cool, and keep chilled for a month or two. For shelf-stable jars follow a current tested water-bath procedure.
Piccalilli reached American kitchens from England, where the name appears in the eighteenth century for an Indian-inflected mixed pickle — the word is generally traced to "pickle" with a fanciful ending, and early English versions leaned on mustard and turmeric in the manner of a mango achar. By the time The Home Cook Book was assembled in 1870s Chicago from contributions by named local women, piccalilli had become something much more domestic: a way to use the green tomatoes still on the vine when frost threatened. The contributor's aside that it is "very nice" without onions is the sort of practical dissent that makes these subscription books worth reading — each recipe arrived with a real cook's preferences attached.The attribution to Mrs. Lamkin is typical of the format; the book's authority came from the fact that its readers knew whose kitchen each recipe had come out of.