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Tomato Catsup (III)
Mrs. T. B. Riley.
Take one bushel of ripe tomatoes, boil them until they are soft, squeeze them through a fine wire sieve, and add half a gallon of vinegar, one pint of salt, two ounces of cloves, a quarter of a pound of allspice, two ounces cayenne pepper, three tablespoonsful of ground peppers, five heads of garlic (skinned and separated). Mix together and boil three hours, or until reduced to about one-half. Bottle without straining.
A nineteenth-century tomato catsup: no sugar, no thickener, and enough salt and vinegar to keep it. The quantities are for a farm kitchen at the end of tomato season, so scaling is the first order of business.
- A bushel of tomatoesRoughly 53 lb. Dividing the whole recipe by eight gives about 6 1/2 lb tomatoes, 1 cup vinegar, 4 tablespoons salt, 1/4 oz cloves, 1/2 oz allspice, 1/4 oz cayenne, a good teaspoon ground pepper and one head of garlic.
- "One pint of salt"Measured by volume, that is close to a pound of salt for the full batch — a preservative dose, not a seasoning one. The result is a sharp condiment used by the teaspoon, and it will taste aggressively salty straight from the spoon.
- Cayenne at two ouncesNineteenth-century cayenne was of variable strength and was sometimes adulterated. Modern ground cayenne at this rate is fierce; add half, boil, and judge before committing the rest.
- "Three tablespoonsful of ground peppers"Almost certainly ground black pepper, the cayenne having already been named. The cloves and allspice are unspecified as to whole or ground.
- Bottle without strainingWith whole or coarse spices this gives a gritty, sediment-heavy catsup that goes on darkening in the bottle. Tying the cloves and allspice in a cloth bag and lifting it out before bottling gets the same flavour with a smoother pour.
- SievingA fine wire sieve and a wooden pestle does the work, but a food mill with the medium plate is faster and keeps seeds and skins out without forcing them through.
- Three hours of reductionUse a wide, heavy, non-reactive pan and stir often once it thickens; tomato purée at this depth scorches on the bottom long before it looks in danger. The vinegar will also strip an unlined copper or cast-iron pot.
- Vinegar strength and keepingPeriod vinegar varied widely in acidity; use standard 5% cider or white vinegar. For shelf storage, follow current water-bath canning directions for tomato products rather than the book's bare instruction to bottle — otherwise keep it refrigerated and use it within a few months.
The word came to English from the Malay kecap, itself generally traced to a Hokkien term for a fermented fish or soy brine, and for most of the eighteenth century an English "catsup" was as likely to be made of mushrooms, walnuts or anchovies as anything else. Tomato versions took hold in America in the early nineteenth century and, as here, they were built on vinegar, salt and a heavy hand with clove, allspice and cayenne — sugar-forward ketchup of the sort sold in bottles today came later, and commercial makers leaned on it partly as a preservative once they stopped salting so hard. Recipes like this one belong to the end of the tomato glut, when a bushel was cheap and had to be turned into something that would last the winter; The Home Cook Book, compiled from contributed recipes, prints three separate tomato catsups, which tells you how routine the annual boiling-down was.