Pepper vinegar
Mary Randolph's pepper vinegar: ripe pepper pods simmered in vinegar until the liquid is reduced to one quart, then strained for use in gravies and catsups. From The Virginia Housewife.
Tomato soy
Tomato soy, The Virginia Housewife
Mary Randolph's tomato soy, a tomato condiment and not soybean sauce: tomatoes salted in layers for three days, boiled for a day, passed through a sieve and spiced with cloves, allspice, black pepper and cayenne.
Overview
Tomato soy is a thick, spiced tomato condiment made in quantity. Randolph's version starts from a bushel of tomatoes, which is far larger than a household batch today, and it is cooked for most of two days. The name has nothing to do with soybeans. The catalogue that supplied this topic makes the same point.
The finished liquid is poured into bottles and kept. It is closer to a long-cooked tomato sauce with strong spice than to a table ketchup, and the source gives it as one of several preparations for keeping tomatoes through the season.
Sources for this section
Method in the source
The tomatoes are sliced without skinning and layered in a tub with salt and sliced onions. After three days they go into a large iron pot and boil from early morning until night, stirred constantly. The mixture is then sieved, and the liquor is returned to the pot with the spices.
Boiling the spiced liquor slowly through a second day reduces it. The liquid is cooled, bottled and corked. Randolph writes that it keeps well when boiled slowly and sufficiently, and that a batch which ferments must be boiled again.
Sources for this section
Place in the book
Randolph gives tomato soy next to tomato catsup, pepper vinegar and mushroom catsup in the pickles and catsups part of the book. Read together, these recipes show a Virginia kitchen making tomato and pepper condiments before bottled ketchup became common.
The recipe is evidence for the book's own method. It is not a record of a single origin.
Sources for this section
Storage and limits
Randolph writes that tomato soy will keep for many years if it is boiled slowly and enough, and it gives a reboil instruction for a batch that ferments. Those are the book's statements. The page does not test them, and it gives no acidity figure, shelf life or safety check.
Do not follow the storage advice as a modern preservation method. The large batch size and the long boil are part of the historical record, not guidance for a home kitchen.
Sources for this section
History
Randolph's tomato soy is one of the tomato condiments in The Virginia Housewife, listed in the pickles and catsups section beside pepper vinegar and mushroom catsup. The consulted text is the 1860 edition on Project Gutenberg. The first edition was printed earlier; the text here is not compared with it. The name is a tomato condiment, not soybean sauce.
Ingredients
Method
- Cut a bushel of full ripe tomatoes in slices without skinning them.
- Sprinkle the bottom of a large tub with salt and lay in the tomatoes.
- Over each layer about two inches thick, sprinkle half a pint of salt and add three onions sliced with their skins on.
- Leave the layered tomatoes for three days.
- Put the mixture into a large iron pot and boil it from early morning until night, stirring constantly so it does not stick, and mashing it as it cooks.
- The next morning, pass the mixture through a sieve, pressing it to get all the liquor.
- Add an ounce of cloves, a quarter pound of allspice, a quarter pound of whole black pepper and a small wine glass of cayenne to the liquor.
- Boil the liquor slowly and constantly for the whole day, then pour it into a suitable vessel to cool in the evening.
- The next day, bottle it and cork it well, and keep it in a cool place in warm weather.
- If it ferments, boil it a second time.
Places
Virginia
Historical attestation · Region evidenceRecipe in a Virginia household book; it attests the recipe in that book, not an origin.
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Sources
Project GutenbergMethod · History
The Virginia Housewife; Or, Methodical CookTomato soy: a bushel of ripe tomatoes sliced and salted in layers with half a pint of salt and three sliced onions per layer, left three days, boiled a day, sieved, spiced with an ounce of cloves, a quarter pound each of allspice and whole black pepper and a small wine glass of cayenne, bottled after a day's cooling; reboil if it ferments.
Cited in: Overview; Method in the source; Place in the book; Storage and limits