Why am I putting today’s food in parentheses? Because if you google it, it comes up as Piccalilli, but many 19th century cookbooks spell it Piccalilly, including the recipe I decided to use. And what encouraged me to try this random thing? Well, I had a bunch of leftover green tomatoes in my freezer from the garden last summer and needed a way to use them! When I looked up green tomatoes under 19th century recipes, the most common recipes were Piccalilly and pickles – and Piccalilly didn’t require canning. Don’t forget to check out the one minute Instagram version!
Piccalilly
Cookery Craft
1894
Step One: Okay, so technically the recipe called for an entire peck of sliced green tomatoes. Not only do I not have a peck of tomatoes (which is apparently like 10-14 pounds), but there’s no way I wanted to make that much. So I quartered the recipe. I took my three pounds of tomatoes, added salt, and let it sit overnight.
Step Two: Next morning! Drain the tomatoes, throw in onion and boil it in VINEGAR! The only descriptor was “good” vinegar. I did manage to ascertain that if the author wanted me to use cider vinegar, she did specify that, so I finally decided to go with white wine vinegar. That did not take away from the entire house smelling like acid as those tomatoes and onions boiled.
Step Three: Take out the tomatoes and onions and let the vinegar boil down “to one-third”, then add a whole lot of spice! Specifically: sugar, red pepper, ground mustard, allspice, cinnamon, black pepper, and cloves. I was a little skeptical about the complete opposites of some of these spices…but also intrigued.
Step Four: Pour the sauce over the tomatoes (and onions) and cover until cold.
Step Five: See what my husband thinks! I decided to serve it with toast because, when looking it up, it appears Piccalilly is often served on sandwiches, so it didn’t seem fair to make him take a big bite of vinegar-boiled tomatoes and onions by itself.
Verdict:
Don’t eat this by itself!! First Daniel took a bite and then I, after dying of laughter at his reaction, also tried it and oh, my gosh. I couldn’t even finish chewing. How did anyone eat this? As Daniel said, they must have been desperate for food. Aaand, then we tried it on top of the toast, and suddenly it made sense. I mean, it was still vinegary and…shall we say pungent? But I understood why it could be good in small amounts on a sandwich or with other food. Daniel even ended up finishing the plate!
Looking at other recipes, I feel like the tomatoes should have been chopped more finely – or even cubed, but the recipe said sliced, so I went with sliced. I am also pretty sure the onions were supposed to be chopped smaller, but I hate onions, so made them a size I could easily stay away from. That being said, both really need to be smaller if you are going to use Piccalilly in an edible way.
Have you ever tried (or made) Piccalilly? How do you eat it?
Forest Idylls 