Ketchup & Chili Sauce

It’s pretty hard to imagine American cuisine without tomatoes, but before the late 1700s, they were a novelty. Some people thought they were poisonous (as the fruit resembled the toxic fruit of the potato plant), but for the most part tomatoes just hadn’t been domesticated and grown in enough places for people to get acquainted.

So, there were no marinaras, no tomato soups, no ketchup! Up until the early 1800s, ketchup was a condiment more likely to be made of mushrooms than tomatoes. In fact in cookbooks of the era, if a recipe called for “ketchup,” it could be assumed to be a mushroom ketchup. Ketchups were basically pickle-y condiments and could be made of many things, including the aforementioned mushrooms, as well as gooseberries, walnuts, anchovies, and so on. And though some 19th-century cookbooks included recipes for a sauce that resembles modern-day ketchup, it was often just called tomato sauce. (Note that in Australia, ketchup is still called tomato sauce.) 

Eventually the tomato made its way into a ketchup and thus carved out its niche on the American table. By 1876 tomato ketchup was being sold in bottles by Heinz. By the turn of the century, ketchup was being exported all over the world.

This brings us to chili sauce. Up until the explosion of hot sauces in this country, an ingredient called “chili sauce” would have been easily understood as ketchup’s chunky cousin. These days if you want people to understand what you mean by “chili sauce,” you have to write “tomato-based chili sauce, such as Heinz.”

It’s even more confusing since this ketchup-like sauce is not spicy, as the name “chili” would suggest. Near as I can make out the title of the recipe is a reference to the green peppers that are used to make it. It’s probably a holdover from British recipes where the word chili could be used to just mean pepper (and not necessarily a hot one).

What follows is a chili sauce recipe based on a mash-up of two recipes: One is from Oscar Tschirky’s book The Cook Book by “Oscar” of the Waldorf (1896) and the other is from May Irwin’s Home Cooking (1904). These two were contemporaries and very likely knew one another. For a longer explanation of how/why this is so, see the article on Thousand Island Dressing.

American Chili Sauce

Makes 21/2 cups
Most recipes for this called for mass quantities of ingredients, because it was intended to be "put up" and used throughout the year. For example, Oscar's recipe called for 48 tomatoes and 6 cups of vinegar. This more modest version makes only 21/2 cups, but it's obviously easily scaled.
Be aware that this is a sort of cross between a pickle and a sauce: It's chunky and pickle-y. It has hints of ketchupness, but it's nowhere near as sweet.

3 tomatoes (about 9 ounces each), chopped
1/2 large green bell pepper, finely chopped
1/2 large white onion (about 5 ounces), finely chopped
2 tablespoons brown sugar
3/4 cup distilled white vinegar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
Small pinch of nutmeg
Small pinch of cinnamon

1. In a medium saucepan, stir together all the ingredients. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce to a simmer and cook, covered, for 15 minutes to get all the juices out.
2. Uncover and cook at a high simmer until about three-fourths of the liquid has evaporated. This can take anywhere from 1 hour to 11/2 hours. It depends entirely on how watery your vegetables were to start out.
3. Let cool, then store in the refrigerator.

Horseradish Chili Sauce: Stir 11/2 teaspoons very well drained prepared horseradish into the cooled sauce. (Taste and add more if you like heat.)