Aging Improves the Flavor

Here I am, trying to remember something from centuries ago, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t almost impossible. I may have bitten off more than I can chew. My cooking group decided to do this, not me. Still, I didn’t want to protest, and accepted the challenge. That’s the whole problem. I’ll try to explain. We are supposed to prepare a baked good that was a signature creation by a grandparent. This is going to be painful. What follows should explain why.

Baked goods? Hmmm... I have very few memories of my grandmother, but they would fill a book. Of the few I do have, at least half are food-related. There’s no other grandparent I can turn to, because my grandfather never cooked or baked anything in his life. Men didn’t do things like that back then because they were men. That’s sad, when you think about it.

I guess want to recreate a recipe used by my grandmother, whom I called Mammy, to my mother’s horror. I need to do this for my own sake, for my grandmother’s sake. In a way, this effort is my apology for having so few memories of her, even though I was all of six years old when she died. Actually, I was closer to seven. 

Maybe I should remember more, but for at least two years before that, Mammy was immobile, hooked up to an oxygen tank. She was skeletal, less than ninety pounds. I really need to honor her all these years later by recalling something related to nutrition rather than disease. Still, you must admit that conjuring up memories you had only up to age five is a difficult task.

Baked goods. We are instructed to write about a baked good item a grandparent used to make and are supposed to reconstruct the recipe. My group members were all excited about this project. I was not. I am not even sure I can get through this.

Herein lies the first problem: I don’t recollect any special cakes made by my grandmother. I don’t like cake anyway, and rarely make one, and then only if my arm is being twisted painfully behind my back. Cake is unappetizing to me, whether it is white, chocolate, or spice. (Especially if it’s spice.) It was painful when my birthday came around in the fall and my mother would ask what flavor I wanted. (I never wanted chocolate cake. I don’t like chocolate.) She would also ask what color of icing I wanted. That was more fun, because she could really decorate a cake despite never having been trained. Too bad I didn’t like the frosting, but at least it would be colorful and pretty to look at.

Now for the second problem: I have a memory of pies made for holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas, and for a baked goods charity sale for the VFW, and for a summer family gathering. Mammy liked mincemeat (had to be homemade) pie and maybe pumpkin. I really don’t like mincemeat with its cloying everything, and pumpkin is just ho-hum. Actually, the stuff they fill the crusts with is so sicky sweet that I mostly always pass on it as a dessert option. 

The next logical observation about this variety of baked good is that I only make pie once in a blue moon, and prefer to crush graham crackers for the crust. Who uses Crisco these days? Why bother with the crust, if what goes in it turns your stomach or makes your teeth ache?

What else comes under the category of baked goods? Rolls or bread, biscuits, cookies, cheesecakes, brownies, doughnuts, pastries? This question brings us to the third problem I’m having with this assignment: Mammy didn’t make any of those things. She didn’t cook a lot either, maybe because the cast iron skillets we had weighed almost as much as she did. She did like to stir the pots of boiling fruit she had helped chop, though. She was also quite happy when supervising the testing and canning of the pears, corn, green peppers, applesauce, peaches... and a few jams and jellies.

The kitchen in my five-year-old’s memory swirled and swaggered with its vapors of cinnamon and white sugar, orange and white sugar, strawberries and white sugar. These were all the prelude to the making of the queen of sweetness, using Madame Perfect Tomato. I am speaking of tomato conserve. 

As I continue relating this experience, I am begging the indulgence of readers who might try to point out that a jam is not classifiable as a baked good. While that might be true, we can’t dispute that tomato conserve is a stellar topping for homemade bread, still warm from the oven, only acquired five minutes away. We also must accept the fact that tomato conserve is a very apropos filling for, say, crêpes or eclairs, or countless pastries.

Hence, I am going to recreate Mammy’s tomato conserve. I wish us luck… it’s all I’ve got to work with. We were a baked goods-less family.

All that occurs to me when the crystal jar of tomato conserve flashes across my mind are three ingredients. Where the jar sat, forever and a day it sat there, was more interesting to me. You see, in case you have not already guessed, I am truly not partial to sweets, and prefer colors, textures, smells to sugary things. Every day of my mother’s life that jar of conserve (maybe replaced by identical ones as each was consumed) was in its place between the toaster and the napkin holder, in a line with the sugar bowl and the jar of Nescafé. 

I really only liked tomato conserve when I could dab a bit onto a thick swath of salty peanut butter. The peanut was in turn slathered on salted butter atop a thick slice of bread. Three layers of salty taste cancelled out the top sugar layer enough so it even tasted good. (It’s so depressing to think I can’t pluck a single other dish out of the back of my mind, but I do want to stick to the truth and not make anything up.)

A bit earlier I had started to talk about the ingredients, so I ought to tell you what I remember. The jam included: chopped tomatoes; fresh orange rinds, cut in slices never more than an inch long, usually a quarter of an inch thick; and white sugar. Of course, there was probably some water added at some point during the process. That is all, though. 

Now that I think about it, I do recall how my grandmother would produce a small amount of muslin from her sewing things. It would be cut to exactly the right size. If there was no muslin, she might make a little cheesecloth bag instead. These were for the spices, to boil them along with the fruit but not to have them get into the jams where they could be hazardous for the teeth. I kind of liked the cheesecloth because you could see the spices better.

Please do not expect me to recall what spices were used and how much of them went into the bags and were tied perfectly, then submerged, like a lobster into boiling water. (I don’t cook lobsters because it’s horrible to watch and scientists now say they feel pain.) I can’t even remember if the tomato conserve had spices in it. 

Please understand that this is first an attempt to recreate my grandmother’s signature jam recipe, suitable for serving on or inside baked goods. After that, I will consult recipes online to see if spices are required. Afterward, not before. This is a flavor memory test, you see.

So here we are and I can quickly tell you that I have cut up two or three pounds of ripe tomatoes. Mammy, by contrast, usually had at least a bushel to prepare. (Another bushel was for spaghetti sauce, but that’s definitely not a baked good.) She also would go with my mother to get the perfect tomatoes at roadside family stands in the Finger Lakes Region of New York. That meant they were not just perfect; they were the best in the world. After all, we lived in the Fruit Belt and were very proud of that.The roadside tomatoes also had a fairly decent price. So did the rest of the fruits and vegetables. Otherwise, we could never have bought so much.

It looks like the tomatoes that have just been chopped up will need water, but I have no idea how much to add. Eyeball it. That seems fair. Now the orange rinds... I’m not certain if the orange flesh was used as well, but tend to think not. There were no pithy fibers like you see on the orange sections, so I am definitely leaning toward that only this part of the fruit was used here. 

Last but not least comes the (ugh) (processed) (very unhealthy) white sugar. Memory tells me to throw the whole ten-pound bag in on top of the tomatoes and water, but I restrain myself. We’ll start with two cups, though, because this is a big pot and we should make use of it. The (yuck) sugar will help tone down the bitterness of the oranger peelings, too. Medium heat just to get the contents good and hot. Then turn it down a tad so it cooks down but doesn’t burn.

[Interlude. Two hours pass.]

Time to try this syrupy stuff. It looks sticky enough. No, I didn’t use a candy thermometer. Mammy never did. She just eyeballed the pot and watched it a lot, like I’m trying to do. It worked for her.

[Gack! This is atrocious! What the h...?]

The tomatoes are not from Finger Lakes, not from New York State. That is a real issue. Tomatoes from Mexico or somewhere else can’t hold a candle to those of my childhood. (Those were the same tomatoes I’d grab out of the bushel and eat like apples, until once I ate so many I got a rash all over the back of my neck.)

Not enough sugar? Is that also part of the problem? How is that possible? I have sweet crystals lining my lungs now.

I am going to give in and look up recipes for tomato conserve. Here’s the first one I found that sounds similar. Please note that the recipe is in italics. My observations are in regular type.

***

This conserve is based on a vintage recipe from an older Ball Blue Book with the cinnamon and cloves thrown in as a nod to Indian jams and chutneys and for the warmth these spices bring to the citrus tone, but they are optional and this conserve is good with or without them. 

OLD FASHIONED TOMATO CONSERVE

INGREDIENTS

5 pounds firm just ripe Tomatoes

2 pounds Sugar

Note: see why I obsessed about the sweetness? Tomatoes are already kind of sweet, aren’t they?

1 lemon, thinly sliced 

Note: This alone makes me think I might have to reject this recipe. Lemons? I am one hundred percent certain Mammy used orange peels. There was nothing yellow in the jam.

1 stick Cinnamon 

This really not a lot of cinnamon, but I definitely agree that it has to be in stick form. The powder is disgusting in jams or jellies. Makes them look dirty.

2 Cloves

Where you use cinnamon, you also use cloves. Also whole, not in powder form.

DIRECTIONS

Blanch the tomatoes in hot water and remove the skins. Cut into quarters, cover with sugar and allow to stand overnight. 

Now I remember. There was a blanching step. That’s where I learned the verb, ‘to blanch’. I’m not positive, but the tomatoes weren’t left overnight. There are a few scalded fingers in the back of my mind. Once heated, tomatoes conserve the warmth. No hurrying along the cooling process. This step is a bit of a pain. A little tomato skin never hurt anybody.

Drain off syrup; heat to the boiling point.

Once the syrup is boiling tie cinnamon and cloves (optional) into square of muslin, cheese cloth or jelly bag, suspend in mixture, also add lemon slices, continue cooking until syrup will spin a long thread (230 - 235 degrees on candy thermometer). 

What is optional? The cinnamon? The cloves? The bag? How long is a long thread? How thick should the thread be? I am beginning to remember now. The long thread, how hot it was, the waiting.

Remove bag of spices. 

Pack tomatoes into sterilized hot canning jars and carefully add hot syrup to 1/4 inch from rim.

Now I recall the sterilizing process. It was boring just glass Mason jars jouncing around in the hot, roiling water.

Seal and process in Hot Water Bath for 15 minutes, or cool and store in refrigerator.

Cool and store processed jars in dark pantry for a year.

This sounds about right. I don’t think you have to let them sit in a dark pantry. I think the recipe means they keep for a year. (Probably lots longer.) Funny how the recipe author has assumed everybody has a pantry that can be kept dark. We were fortunate to have a root cellar, with no roots but it did have a dry-as-a-bone dirt floor. We had lots of preserved food there, and, like the recipe states, made things to last a year. We never ran out, unless the mice got lucky and popped off some of the caps. Strong little fellows they were.

I made 5 half pint jars with this recipe.

This is what the recipe author states. Just five? Not worth the effort. Our batches, Mammy’s tomato conserve making, must have produced triple or quadruple that. Maybe a hundred times that.

I have also found another recipe, this one with oranges, and at a ratio of one cop of sugar to one tomato. It doesn’t call for a muslin bag for the spices, but then you have to strain the tomatoes. More work than muslin or cheesecloth, so I do prefer the little bags if we’re using spices.

Another recipe calls for orange as well as lemon, but for eight pounds of tomatoes requires only three-fourths of a cup of sugar. Not the right recipe, clearly. One big point I heard Mammy repeat was that the pot could burn because of all the sugar. That would pretty much destroy the pot.

***

I could keep searching the internet and maybe check in a couple of my cookbooks, but I’m not confident anything will appear. Maybe I could o through the recipe box, a shabby little metal thing with a top that flips up. It sometimes sheds flakes of its once-cute design. It seems some of the handwriting is not my mother’s. I never knew how many years Mammy went to school. I suspect it wasn’t for a lot of years, but at least she knew cursive.

It still sounds very possible that the source of the tomato conserve of my childhood was the Ball Blue Book, as mentioned for the first recipe. That book, compiled by a husband and wife whose surname was Ball, was from 1909. The book was a classic and was constantly upgraded, reprinted, revised. It was and is a point of reference for many things prepared in the kitchen. 

However, there’s the lemon thing. My grandmother was a downright prude when it came to cooking. It is hard to imagine that she would ever alter a formula for a dish. At least I had always believed that. Still, had Mammy actually been so bold as to trade in lemons for oranges? Maybe I should try just one more source.

No, even Betty Crocker doesn’t appeal to me any more. I have a toothache and my stomach hurts. Not too badly, but just enough to make do with what I made in the first batch, just throwing in a little muslin bag of spices: cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg. Yes, I realize the last two aren’t supposed to be used, but I like them, so am using them.

Now here I sit, in a kitchen without a metal top painted white, somewhat scratched, and with a blue edging painted all around. It was a cold table that never saw a table cloth or place mats. It might have been from the 1940s, but it never occurred to me to ask. You see them in flea markets or antique stores. It would be good to ask one of the vendors.

Aging has probably improved the flavor of the tomato conserve that still sits in the middle of the back edge of the cold table. A table sitting in an old, run-down kitchen with thin glass panes that steamed up beautifully with the boiling pots. A kitchen where food was real and not from boxes or cans. 

Time has served to purge some of the excess sweetness from the pots and wrap it around my memories. That is the flavor I love.