ISSUE 62, RELISH, Part 3: Uncooked Tomato Relish
Tomato Relish
Popular beliefs can become very squirrely when it comes to diet. Certain topics stimulate lurid imaginings, such as whether a plant contains poison, whether a processed food has been adulterated, whether eating certain foods a particular times will disrupt sleep, sex, or digestive regularity. In the 19th century a great knot of anxieties collected around eating foods raw. Newspapers are filled with admonitory articles warning against eating apples off the tree, including sliced raw cucumbers in salads, or eating tomatoes raw. Admittedly, many of the tomatoes prior to William Livingston’s breeding work of the 1870s and 1880s were astringent tasting, acid bombs. Dyspepsia was the by word of that anxious group—a kind of chronic gastric upset that was reckoned possibly fatal. Yet not everyone bought into the fear of dyspepsia or considered raw foods a death warrant. Too many animals and insects feasted on raw fruits and vegetables and thrived.
Uncooked tomato relish became a thing in the 1890s among the adventurous. It depended upon the availability of Livingston tomatoes with their balance of sugar and acid, their excellent ripening (no raw heart and mushy exterior), and spherical configuration. There were two schools of uncooked tomato relish: a spicy, sugary green tomato relish and a savory ripe tomato relish. Both preserved diced and seasoned tomato in vinegar, admixing onions, peppers, celery, or other ingredients. The primary variable in the recipe was whether one added sugar or not. I print two Georgia recipes, published a year apart—1911 and 1912—marking out the two approaches. The first comes from the Augusta Chronicle of December 27, 1911 exemplifying the sweetened relish:
The second comes from the Atlanta Journal of August 18, 1912 exemplifying the savory approach:
The horseradish gives the relish a bit of kick, but in the 1940s the tendency was to use hot red peppers rather than horseradish. Celery salt found its way into many of the recipes in the 1920s. The every-reliable Henrietta Dull printed a Green Tomato Relish recipe in Georgia newspapers on August 27, 1933. The use of mace as a chief spice is a Lowcountry practice that had made its way across the South in the early 20th century.