Pepper Relish
Pepper Relish. - Two dozen ripe or green tomatoes, one dozen peppers, five large onions; chop and let stand all night, with one cupful of salt. In the morning put in the kettle two cupfuls of sugar, four tablespoonfuls of Coleman's mustard, one and one-half pints of vinegar; cook three hours.
A standard turn-of-the-century chopped relish, written for a cook who already knew the method. Two things it leaves out — draining the salted vegetables, and how long the finished relish keeps — are the two things worth getting right.
- Drain the saltA cupful of salt on this quantity of vegetables is a curing brine, not a seasoning. After the overnight stand, tip the mixture into a colander, drain hard and press out the liquid; a rinse is also an option. Skip this and the relish will be punishingly salty.
- What kind of peppers"One dozen peppers" most likely means sweet bell or bullnose peppers; a dozen modern bells will do, though you may want to weigh rather than count them. If you want heat, use a couple of hot peppers among them rather than twelve.
- Coleman's mustardColman's dry mustard powder, still sold. Four tablespoons is assertive but correct for this volume; stir it into a little of the vinegar to a paste first so it does not clump.
- The kettleThe recipe says only "the kettle"; use a wide, heavy non-reactive pan -- stainless or enamelled. Bare aluminium or cast iron will react with the vinegar and dull both colour and flavour.
- Three hours is too longOn a modern burner, simmer uncovered 45 to 75 minutes, until the syrup has thickened and no watery liquid pools when you drag a spoon across the pan.
- YieldNot given in the original; expect several pints, depending on how far you reduce it.
- StorageThe book gives no sealing instructions, so treat this as a refrigerator relish: cool, jar, and keep chilled for a few weeks. For shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested water-bath canning recipe with measured acidity rather than improvising from this one.
Chopped, salted, vinegar-and-sugar relishes of this kind — chow-chow, piccalilli, pepper hash, pepper relish — were among the most common preserves in American households at the end of the nineteenth century, and regional cookbooks often carried several versions. They existed to use up the end of the garden, when green tomatoes and late peppers came in together, and to put something sharp on the table beside heavy meat. It sits in the Game chapter: venison, wildfowl and other strong-flavoured meats were conventionally served with a sweet-sour relish or a tart jelly, and a jar of pepper relish did the work a bottled condiment does now. The named brand is a period marker in itself — Colman's mustard powder was widely enough distributed that a recipe could simply call for it and expect to be understood.