Chilli Sauce

There’s a lot of tempting 19th century options for tomato preservation. In addition to catsup, tomatoes were preserved spiced, in piccalilli, chow-chow, or stewed and strained into “soyer.” Tomatoes have one of the highest concentrations of naturally-occurring MSG, and these sauces and pickles all provided ways to add some umami to meals throughout the winter.

I settled on “Chili Sauce” or “Chilli Sauce” which, despite its name, is not really a hot-sauce fore-bearer. Bell peppers generally comprised the “peppers” component. Even swapping them out for jalapenos, the end result doesn’t carry much heat.

According to a 1994 article in the Hartford Courant (CT), “chili sauce seems to have surfaced in New England in the last half of the 19th century… How it got the name remains a mystery… especially because the original product had no chili peppers in it.” Writer Bill Daley wrote that the sauce was would have featured into the diet of seafarers during long voyages, and was used by generations of “Yankee cooks” to “jazz up winter menus,” finding its way into and onto “roast beef, lamb chops, cod cakes, baked beans, eggs – nearly everything – with this blend of tomatoes, peppers, onions, vinegar and spices.”

An 1880 Minnesota cookbook “Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping” lists Chili Sauce among the many sauces worthy of a Christmas dinner:

“Christmas Dinners. Clam soup; baked fish, Hollandaise sauce; roast turkey with oyster dressing and celery or oyster sauce, roast duck with onion sauce, broiled quail, chicken pie; plum and crab-apple jelly; baked potatoes in jackets, sweet potatoes, baked squash, turnips, southern cabbage, stewed carrots, canned corn, canned pease, tomatoes; Graham bread, rolls; salmon salad or herring salad, Chili sauce, gooseberry catsup, mangoes, pickled cabbage; bottled, French or Spanish pickles; spiced nutmeg-melon and sweet- pickled grapes, and beets; Christmas plum-pudding with sauce, charlotte-russe; cocoa-nut, mince, and peach pies; citron, pound, French loaf, white Mountain and Neapolitan cakes; lady’s fingers, peppernuts; centennial drops, almond or hickory-nut macaroons; cocoa-nut caramels, chocolate drops; orange or pine apple ice cream; coffee, tea, and Vienna chocolate.” —Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping [Buckeye Publishing Company:Minneapolis MN] 1880 via foodtimeline.org

Apparently it was a heyday for sauces,  “Commercial relishes and condiments were introduced around this time, and the public developed quite a taste for them. By the 1880s, [James] Farrell said, there was a proliferation of chopping gadgets on the market for do-it-yourselfers,” wrote Bill Daley.

A biography of H.J. Heinz describes Heinz’ systematic “studying” of sauces at the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition. He encountered Tabasco but sensed that the market wasn’t ready for it.

“At the same time, Eugene Durkee or New York and William Railton or Chicago introduced pepper sauces known as ‘Chilli’ sauce. These very mild and thick sauces in hexagonally shaped bottles and cathedral square shaped bottles fascinated Heinz. The thicker, mild, ketchup-like product found a larger market in the north. Heinz introduced his as ‘Chili’ and found a large market that remains to this day.”- H.J.Heinz, A Biography, Quentin R. Skrabec, Jr. 2009

My mom uses Heinz’ Chili sauce to make cocktail sauce. Beyond that, I don’t know many uses for it. I was a little stumped at what to use my own Chilli Sauce for, with its 19th century cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and allspice. So far, some has made its way into some barbecue sauce. I guess I have all winter long to see what else I can “jazz up” with it.

Recipe:

“Twenty-four ripe tomatoes, eight onions, six peppers, eight coffee cups of vinegar, eight tablespoons of sugar, the same of salt, one tablespoonful of cinnamon, one of allspice, one of nutmeg, and one of cloves. Boil all well together and seal while hot. This is superior to tomato catsup.”

Source: Mrs. Charles H. Gibson’s Maryland And Virginia Cookbook