Max, I will bet that your grandmothers were like mine in that every crumb was saved, and every watermelon rind was destined to return to the table as a pickle that winter.
Of course, we did feed some of the rinds to the horses, and how they loved them. If you want to see pleasure, just watch a horse munch into a juicy watermelon. They become giant pigs.
You are right that pickling and preserving are becoming lost arts. There was that renaissance in food preservation in the 1970’s with the Back to the Earth movement. Remember city-bred hippy girls trying to learn how to can and freeze? No wonder, home economists decided that every pickle had to be further processed in a Water Bath. Those girls had not a clue as to how to preserve anything.
You and I, on the other hand, had grown up watching family members canning like their lives depended on it–which they did. Those women remembered the Depression, the War Years, and the hard farm years when preserving the garden was the difference between eating and not eating well during the winter.
And, they canned on wood and coal burning kitchen stoves. The temperature in the kitchen must have been awful. It’s bad enough today in an air conditioned kitchen and with an electric stove.
Think of the effort and sweat and love that must have gone into making a batch of catsup or chili sauce.
This Victorian Era Virginia recipe would have been pure torture to prepare. Hand grinding all the vegetables, hand grinding the spices, and then standing over a steaming pot of simmering tomatoes for hours on a summer afternoon.
Even with our modern labor saving machines, homemade Chili Sauce is a labor of love. Still, once you have tasted it, the store bought variety is truly second rate. Heinz used to make a pretty good Chili Sauce, but it seems to have faded from the shelves. The current commercial Chili Sauce is long on heat and short on flavor. None of the old recipes even include chili peppers as one of the ingredients so I am not sure where the name came from. Do you know?
I have simpler ones, but this Antique Virginia Chili Sauce is superb. No one but someone with a large garden could attempt this recipe. Think what it would cost to go out and buy 30 ripe tomatoes, a dozen onions, 6 ripe peppers, and a half dozen each pears and peaches? If you had to buy the ingredients, we would be talking Liquid Gold here. As you can guess, the pears and peaches provide extra sweetness.
Antique Virginia Chili Sauce:
30 ripe tomatoes
12 onions
6 pears
6 peaches
3 red peppers
3 sweet green peppers
4 cups brown sugar
1 quart cider vinegar
3 tablespoons canning salt
½ tablespoon ground cloves
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground allspice
1 tablespoon celery seed
Original recipe begins with, “Use a motar and pestal and grind the spices.” Today we would just open a can and measure out with measuring spoons. However, for the best taste, use a spice grinder and use fresh ground spices.
Original recipe continues: “Put all through a grinder. Cook slowly two and one-half hours. Bottle and seal.”
Most people today would skin the tomatoes by dropping them in boiling water for a few seconds. If you do not have an old fashioned Foley Mill, a food processor will do. What you want is mush. You need to stir this every once in a while as the tomatoes and sugar will stick and burn. After about an hour and a half, sample the chili sauce. Depending on your taste and the ripeness of the tomatoes, you may want to add more brown sugar.
You are going to cook this down to at least half the original mixture. It should be thick as store bought catsup. You may have to cook for an hour longer than the recipe says.
This makes a couple of pints.
Makes an incredible dipping sauce. Hamburgers become divine. Add some horseradish and you have the BEST cocktail sauce.
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